Facebook's growth goes faster and faster and faster

Facebook is still growing like wildfire: earlier this week, the social network put out stats that peg its active-user count at 140 million.

Inside Facebook blogger Justin Smith compared this to the date that Facebook said it hit 130 million members, and estimated that Facebook must be growing by a whopping 600,000 or 700,000 users per day.

We've checked in with Facebook to see if it has an official comment on that estimation; earlier this year, the company's network was growing by 250,000 users per day.

Statistics firms like Nielsen, ComScore, and Compete.com all have found Facebook's U.S. user count to be between 47 million and 50 million--still smaller than the 60 million-ish U.S. visitors that rival MySpace pulls in. But Facebook's growth is primarily overseas now, and its international pull is responsible for those skyrocketing numbers.

This brings back that persistent blogger pundit question: can Facebook's revenues keep pace with that kind of growth?

Especially overseas, server power can be costly. Facebook has raised a ton of venture capital, is reportedly hunting for more, and says it's in good financial shape. That comes back into question, however, if it's growing faster than it ever expected to.

[karl-long]

Yes, the question of revenue is a very interesting one especially as the advertising system on facebook is so bad. I've taken out ads on facebook and paid a 42c CPM and even at that CPM it was not very profitable. In fact they took the limits off one day and my ad (for a t-shirt) got 9.5 million impressions in 1 day. The result was about 4,000 people clicked through and I sold 15 t-shirts. If facebook does not find a way to create value and revenue it's never going to be able to afford the scale that it needs. Facebook is only successful at growing, nothing else, I don't even think they have a valid business model.

[Seanathome]

9.5 MILLION impressions in ONE DAY?! I got to advertise my site on Facebook pronto!! :o

[Zeeshan47]

But only 4k hits. That's ridiculously low. I agree, FB ads just don't cut it.

[Kev_Orng]

If anybody is wondering why they are growing fast, it could be spurred by the economy.

This example is just a drop in the ocean, but if this is happening with other companies, it might partially explain the sudden surge: My wife's company shut down her office of about 300 employees last month. With a month warning, there was plenty of time for the facebook-saavy to encourage and help the rest to sign up for Facebook and add friends, so they could all keep in touch with the coworkers they wanted to keep in touch with. IT didn't stop them either, they facilitated it. So there's a hundred or so new users that wouldn't have signed up if they weren't being laid off.
Since then, my wife and a fairly large group of former colleagues have been networking, sending each other job postings and encouragement, and just generally using facebook in a more positive way than the usual stupid pokes and zombie bites.
Personally, I thought they should have used linkedin, but whatever makes you comfortable, I guess.

[kboateng]

I think if facebook finds a strong revenue model it'll become the biggest social networking site in the world. It is growing by leaps and bounds, even with people saying they restrict creativity and offer no costumization. I think I had a myspace account before my facebook one (and I was one of the first to use it, when there were about only five thousand college users) but now I do not even bother going on Myspace. I liked the customization and media aspects of it and still do but there's only so much I've wanted to do with that site. It has become kiddish in a way, IMO. If facebook started to offer costumization on a smaller scale and comes with a smart revenue model, their intuitive and minimalistic layout will only help it grow even further.

[Stealthdragoon]

That's why people will learn that Facebook is getting more better than Myspace. The fact that Myspace has had so many issues that people are dumping myspace for facebook.

[Zeeshan47]

Myspace appeals to a different demographic. Simple as that. Unless you happen to be a literate student AND an attention ***** wh0 typezz lYk diss, and only has the time for one or the other of these sites(the horrors of being a teenager!), you have no conflict.

[playadel2001]

"offer no costumization"

That's a feature, not a bug. MySpace is for 12 year old emos.

[JwL3394]

I used to only have a MySpace, but then I got a Facebook. I have to say, I like Facebook a lot better, especially the IM feature, although everthing did take some getting used to. The only thing I'm not so fond is the News Feed because it's a stalker's tool, anything I do gets put in there (I'm sure this comment is going to be posted there because I have Facebook Connect on CNET). I didn't dump MySpace completely because I still have a lot of friends on MySpace, but I definitely would.