Today Facebook has officially announced that it has surpassed the 500 million user mark. In a blog post from Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO expressed his appreciation, stating, “This is an important milestone for all of you who have helped spread Facebook around the world. Now a lot more people have the opportunity to stay connected with the people they care about.”
Although Facebook has been the center of controversy for months now, it seems to have not hindered its growth. According to the LA Times, many industry watchers believe that Facebook still has many more milestones ahead of it. Some are even going so far as to mention the possibility of a 1 billion user mark for the site in the future, citing Facebook’s international growth.
Facebook has suffered harsh criticism as of late over its stance on privacy, and it has even sparked various initiatives against the site, all of which have been somewhat ineffective. You might remember the “Quit Facebook Day” initiative that took place in May. Although the effort received a good amount of buzz, it fell flat, garnering only some 37,000 users committing to quit the site.
Mark Zuckerbeg himself has become increasingly controversial, based on his privacy agenda and questionable past. There is evidence that Zuckerberg hacked the email accounts of his competitors to discredit them, and even launched Facebook under false pretense. The controversy over this evidence is so startling that a film is even being made, known as “The Social Network.”
Whether or not the growing controversy over Facebook will cause a significant enough drop in user loyalty remains to be seen. At this point Facebook seems much like a juggernaut; however, if the site does not make their privacy policies more transparent in the future, they may take a significant hit.
Related posts:
