Facebook Now Growing by Over 700,000 Users a Day, and New Engagement Stats | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Now Growing by Over 700,000 Users a Day, and New Engagement Stats

insidefacebook.com

12 pointsrokhayakebe11 comments

I'm really displeased with the comparison to a country. Saying something about the percentage of people in the world that have signed up, or the growth rate is okay, but the choice of where to live is pretty substantial compared to signing up for a website. It's not like other countries are losing citizens when somebody signs up for Facebook, and it's not like people are spending their entire lives on/in Facebook either.

Another intellectually dishonest number I hear Facebook recite is the number of developers. They get this number from the number of people who have installed the developer application. In the first year of the platform, that was 400,000. I know numerous friends who know nothing about programming that installed the developer application in that first week because they didn't know what they were doing. They recite this figure as if hundreds of thousands of people have devoted their lives to making Facebook applications. Sorry to burst someone's bubble, but it just ain't so.

It takes nine months to produce a baby and only a few minutes to sign up for a Facebook account.

To be fair, shouldn't we compare today's birth rate to Facebook's new account signup rate nine months ago?

your first reason, is enough not to compare the two. I don't think the 2nd suggestion works out mathmatically.

Guess their growth won't last forever then.

Dupe, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=686027

Considering how many people there on the earth, factoring in the number of those with computers and sufficient internet access, I'd say new Facebook users per day is rather low.

I got the opposite impression, I think their numbers are incorrect in the other direction. According to their numbers 5% of the global population is a member which IMO is insane. But, with a growth rate of 7mill members every day that would more than double by the end of the year.

My guess, is they count many people several times to inflate their numbers. After all how can they tell a fake user from a real one on a free site.

There is probably a huge market for detection algorithms for a real person to a fake person.

Facebook is also becoming a gaming platform, but the problem there is that users are given stuff for adding more friends. This has an effect on such games as Mafia Wars that people create numerous fake accounts to setup attacks and gain loot.

So, would Facebook rather publish the "real" number, or a larger stable number that keeps increasing and passes the smell test?

Most of them will never log in again, or will do it once or twice.

They track monthly actives. The total account numbers are much higher.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com