If you're a fan of nice round milestones, you'll like this: Facebook welcomed its 200 millionth active user yesterday. Founder Mark Zuckerberg blogged about the huge number, illustrating how far the social-networking site has grown in five years.
Not everyone is celebrating and throwing confetti, though. Yahoo!
Microsoft
You won't find any Google
What is it with the three leading search engines and their inability to nab the social-networking sites that ultimately matter? As the Internet's traffic cops, you would think that they would be the first ones to sniff out hot website trends. Instead, history finds News Corp.
Three of us Fools couldn't agree on what Facebook was worth -- it was either not much, $3 billion, or $15 billion -- back when Facebook supposedly had just a third of the audience that it watches over today.
As the voice behind the $3 billion valuation, I don't feel like tripling my price, but how stupid was Yahoo! to let Facebook get away when it could have had it for $1 billion or so? That price today would translate into just $5 for every Facebook member.
Facebook has not been an easy site to monetize, but its viral ways should leave you drooling over the possibilities of what Facebook can do in the future.
So congratulations, Facebook. My condolences to the failed suitors.
Some cool widgets for your Facebook profile:
- Twitter may be a recessionary winner.
- Facebook may still be the next Mr. Softy.
- Why You Should Fear the Future