Facebook has been growing like crazy since it launched. At first, due to the fact that it was limited, first to college students, then to high school students and so on, growth was relatively slow, but it continued to accelerate until a couple of years ago.
While it's not seeing the same numbers as in 2009, Facebook is still adding users and has recently announced, officially, crossing the 800 million users mark.
It's a remarkable figure, when you realize that the entire
internet was that big in late 2004, early 2005. Only 800 million people or so had been online by that point.
Coincidentally, 2004 is the year Facebook first became available. In just 7 years, Facebook has become as big as all of the websites put together were when it was invented.
The latest figures show that there are over two billion internet users in the world at this point. Considering that there are close to seven billion people on the planet, the web itself has a lot more room to grow.
Even now, only 38 percent of internet users have a Facebook account and regularly visit the site.
But if the web is still growing, you can bet that Facebook will as well. One billion users is only a matter of time and, beyond that, it's only the reach of the web that will limit how popular the site will become.
Of course, as Facebook itself is a perfect example, you never know what the next big thing will be. The site came pretty much out of nowhere to be close to be the biggest in the world.
Google still boasts the largest number of monthly visitors, but it will probably be overtaken by Facebook. Beyond that though, who knows what startup is now brewing and growing to have two billion users five years from now.
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