Has Facebook Peaked?

If Hollywood has gone and made a movie about Facebook, then Facebook has probably peaked. 

  

“One of us, one of us, one of us . . .”

Looking at the numbers, it would seem that FB has definitely peaked: On July 22 of 2010, it got its 500 millionth user—but now three months later, it’s at 543 million. 

  

The inference is easy to make: From the halcyon days of consistently charting 25 million new users per month, Facebook is now going up by about 14 million new users per month. 

  

Still: 14 million users a month? The implications are staggering. 

  

FB doesn’t release numbers of users who’ve quit—rather cagily, they say that, on any given day, half of all users log on to Facebook. 

  

But none of that really matters: Who has registered, and now is inactive, who registered and is on every day, who registered and is sporadic, who registered and now wants their Facebook account shut down and disappeared—all of that is trivial and unimportant, compared to the central and obvious fact that they all registered on Facebook.  

  

This means? It means that one corporation has managed to get the basic personal information of roughly ten percent of the world. 

  

That’s epochal. No wonder the fuckers in Hollywood made a movie about the people behind the Facebook program. So let’s not get too cavalier and condescending, when discussing this remarkable achievement. 

  

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