Facebook, www.facebook.com

Features:
•    Profile, Friends, Networks and Inbox – pages core to the user experience on Facebook – have a prominent place at the top of the user’s profile page
•    Facebook applications – Photos, Notes, Groups, Events and Posted items – are displayed on the left side bar, along with any third-party applications a user has added to their account
– More than 25 million active user groups exist on the site
– More than 4 million users become Fans of Pages each day
– More than 2.5 million events created each month
– More than 52,000 applications currently available in the Facebook Application Directory

Who: 200 million active users
•    More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
•    More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
•    The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

What: Invitation-based, online community
•    Two-way, active communication within sphere of engaged, mutual, reciprocal relationships, using messaging functionality
•    One-way, passive presentation of information within larger sphere of relationships
•    One-way, passive observation within even larger sphere of relationships and news sources
•    Average user has 120 friends on the site
•    Women are more active in maintaining communication with their friend networks than men

When: 24/7
•    More than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
•    More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day
•    More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
•    More than 8 million videos uploaded each month
•    More than 1 billion pieces of content (Web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
•    More than 5,000 applications have 10,000 or more monthly active users

Where: Everywhere
•    More than 40 translations available on the site, with more than 50 in development
•    About 70% of Facebook users are outside the U.S.
•    There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
•    More than 8,000 Web sites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008

How much: Free to join

Observations:
•    As more professional communication (such as job searching) takes place on Facebook, individuals have begun creating separate Facebook profiles – one that’s personal and one that’s professional. As the individual controls who can be their Friend and view the full profile, this lets the person decide with whom they want to share which information.
•    Organizations, publications and companies also are starting to set up their own Facebook Pages. While these are public profiles, they differ from individual’s (people’s) pages in that one can become a Fan rather than a Friend.
•    Because being a Fan is very similar to being a Friend, promoting becoming a Fan of a Page seems to be best for communicating timely (event) communications with a larger, external network.
•    Organizations, publications, companies and individuals also set up Groups. These seem to be best for internal communications, employee/member/subscriber outreach and recruitment, and maintaining communications with lapsed connections and affiliations.
•    In addition to Events, Info, Photos and Video, Facebook applications also allow those with Pages to add RSS/Blog feeds, Boxes highlighting special sections, Sharing functionality, as well as integration with other media channels like Twitter.
•    For example, searching the term “architect” within Facebook, yielded: 500+ People,  160 Pages, 500+ Groups, 465 Events

Information for the above was gathered from the following sources:
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=55257228858&ref=mf
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics#/press/info.php?factsheet

Filed under: So-Called Social Media