Statistics at the end of first quarter of 2014 revealed that Facebook has 1.28 billion monthly active users. And then the last quarter of 2014 statistics revealed it was 1.39 billion monthly active users. Now, March 2015 statistics reveal it is 1.44 billion, this is a clear indication that the number has gone up by 50 million in comparison to the December 2014 statistics. To give you a clear perspective of Facebook’s popularity, the current active users are roughly 5 times the population of United States at 318 Million (2014 statistics). On the other hand, other social networking sites like Twitter showed a statistics of 302 million monthly active users indicating a growth of 47 million over the past year. Similarly LinkedIn has grown to 364 million monthly active users wherein it has added 68 million registered members over the last report…..though active users are not reported by LinkedIn. Based on the current rate of growth it is expected that Facebook would hit the count of 1.5 billion monthly active users by August this year. Currently, Facebook’s description of their monthly active user goes as follows: “a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, used our Messenger app, or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website or application that is integrated with Facebook, in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement.” Though Facebook has been growing steadily, however there are possibilities that Facebook might loose attention hence the predictions that Facebook will soon hit the 2 billion count might hold true and might even not! A study carried out by Quartz reveals that the 2 billion count might occur somewhere in 2018 to 2020 and not before that though it is very difficult to pin point at some specific time to indicate when this will happen. However, there are a lot of factors that affect this analysis for example say Facebook succeeds in increasing its internet population, then it will be much easier for Facebook to hit this count of 2 billion. On the contrary, Facebook could also change its statistical representation of the monthly active users. In the current scenario Facebook excludes the users it acquires from other services like Whatsapp and Instagram unless and until they would qualify as users which is measured by their other activities on Facebook. Now, suppose Facebook starts including these users as well in their monthly active users then the count would certainly increase tremendously. The statistics revealed as in late December 2014 indicates that Instagram has surpassed 300 million monthly active users and Whatsapp shows it has surpassed 800 million as per recent analysis. It remains to be seen how fast the social media giant will take to hit the 2 billion monthly active users and set a new benchmark for social networking.
