14 DAY TRIAL // To say that Facebook is popular is not much of a statement. But eMarketer is coming out with some numbers showing just how many people are using Facebook right now, in the US at least, and how many it estimates will be using the social network in the next couple of years.
At the end of 2010, more than half of internet users in the US accessed Facebook at least once a month. Their number will only grow in the coming years, though the growth is much smaller than in the past couple of years.
"This year, 132.5 million US web users will use the site monthly, eMarketer forecasts. That increase of 13.4% in the number of users means Facebook will reach almost nine in 10 social network users and 57.1% of internet users," eMarketer predicts.
"By 2013, 62% of web users and almost half (47.6%) of the overall US population will be on Facebook," it continues.
The analysis firm bases its estimates on a number of factors and sources, more than a dozen, including surveys and visitor numbers data.
In contrast, Twitter is much less popular, though a significant portion of the population, almost ten percent of internet users in the US, is using the microblogging platform.
"By the end of 2010, 16.4 million US adults, or 9% of the adult internet population, used Twitter. Growth will surpass 26% this year as Twitter reaches 11% of internet users and 16.5% of US adult social network users. By 2013, nearly 28 million Americans will be tweeting," the report predicted.
The data for Twitter includes third-party apps but doesn't include data for users under 18 years old.
While growth prospects don't look great for either Facebook or Twitter in the US, both services are still growing hugely in some countries and are only now starting to get traction in others, so their overall numbers will continue to rise for some time to come.