- Image by jdlasica via Flickr
The founder and chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, believes that the world’s most popular social-networking site will reach the one billion mark. He was speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on 22 June 2010 where he revealed that the reason why Facebook had little chance of increasing its worldwide users from 500 million to 1 billion this year was probably as a result of not conquering the following countries as of yet – Russia, Japan, China and Korea. For example, Facebook in Russia only has about one million users although Zuckerberg claims that the figure was doubling every six months.
Therefore, while Facebook is the leading social-networking site in many countries, it is yet to figure out how to break through the four countries mentioned above. However, Zuckerberg expectes the tipping point to be reached when “local-to-local connections outnumber local-to-foreign” friending on the site in all these countries. Zuckerberg also admitted that he had paid “too much attention” to Twitter out of fear that the micro-blogging site’s incredible growth would outpace that of Facebook. He described Twitter’s growth rate as kind of unnatural due to the large number of media attention it received over a short period of time.
Talking Point
Does Facebook have anything to worry about in terms of being overtaken as the most popular social network? What do you think is the biggest threat to Facebook at the moment?