moTi - 9:49 am on Dec 16, 2010 (gmt 0)

contra!

the fact that Facebook users exchange over 1 billion messages per day is ... excuse me ... pretty significant.

1 billion messages of mostly pointless crap - pretty unsignificant.

the fact that there are over 500 million user on the Facebook is also very impressive.

500 million accounts != 500 million active users. pr drivel is less impressive.

Whether you like or hate him, Mark created a tool that offers us a different way to communicate using the web.

no, in terms of way of communication, facebook is just like any other tool that is out there since years. in fact, as for that matter, there is next to zero innovation in facebook.

People are connecting with old friends, classmates, even estranged family members because of how Facebook works. There is no other tool, not one, that has achieved this level of re-connection among people.

not this level, but there are tons of other networks in the world on which people are interconnecting.

Facebook is an advertiser's dream in the making.

facebook is and will be an advertiser's nightmare. social media is one of the most inappropriate advertising channels out there. you better reach out to people who are in active buying mode, not hold billboards between people who are occupied with conversation. facebook is utterly underperforming for most of the marketers with ridiculously low conversion rates.

Facebook has had and will have a huge impact on our online experience

not for me. and not for many people i know.

It has to do with their influence on our world.

did you ever have a look at the distribution of unique facebook users? for sure, facebook has indeed managed to occupy the brains of most american users. but it really is far less important in most other countries. for example, well below a third in my age category use facebook. only a few of my former classmates are there. that makes facebook largely unusable for reconnecting purposes. as well as in most other countries by now, the numbers of real active users aren't increasing for some time now. meanwhile facebook is on its peak.

so to say that facebook has taken over the world or influenced daily communication habits for all of us is wrong. right, it has changed the world - but only for a minority of people. compared to the u.s., it is much less significant in other parts of the world.

[edited by: lawman at 11:45 am (utc) on Dec 16, 2010]