The Social Scene - Facebook Country

I heard an interesting stat from Megan Halkett at Patio Social - if Facebook was a country, it would rank as the thrid most populated country in the world behind China and India.  With over 500 million users, it's being predicted that Facebook will reach the 1 billion user mark as early as 2012 which just seems preposterous to me.  There are over 6 billion people in the world and just over 7% of them are connected through a program that started off as a university directory.  Facebook nation is holding strong and I'm almost ashamed to say I'm a part of it.

There's not much I can say about Facebook that you don't already know.  I always think it's crazy when I meet someone that doesn't have Facebook because it's so rare to find; just take a look at the Facebook Stat page and you'll see what I'm talking about.  Aside from using Facebook to keep up with friends, users can connect with celebrities, businesses, politicians and sports teams.  Unlike MySpace, Facebook maintains a unified look that still allows users to adjust the content and layout of their page.  This was one of the pros that drew me in.  I was tired of constantly re-vampng my page and saw Facebook as the answer to my prayers.

As it's grown in popularity over the years, I've found Facebook sliding away from the simplicity that made it great in the first place.  With so many applications available to users, majority of them being games, and constant "improvements" to the site, I've found my own usage time steadily decreasing.  My favourite Facebook application is the Event function which would be an obvious choice given one of my chosen professions.