Journal #16, Feb 22

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/16/technology/hempel_facebook.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009021910

There are over 175 million of us. I am talking about the mass amount of people who have a Facebook account. Facebook is taking over our lives. Facebook, which was originally intended for college students (18-25), is now predominantly used by people older than the average college student. It has grown tremendously even in the last year. How big is Facebook in fact? Well Microsoft just purchased 1.6% stake of the company for $240 million. This gives Facebook an actual value of $15 billion. Mark Zuckerberg’s original concept was for it to be an online version of the relationships we have in real everyday life. If you log on to Facebook just to check one thing, you end up surfing around looking at pictures of someone who was in your high school graduating class. The average user spends roughly 169 minutes per month surfing around the website. It just like in real life when you see one of your friends, you end up talking for hours on end. Facebook is just an online version of bumping into friends and keeping in touch. But now Zuckerberg's big plan has come into action. He wants to turn Facebook into the world’s standardized communication and marketing platform. President Obama used Facebook as way of marketing himself to the younger voters in the United States. With Facebook having a lot of members this was a pretty smart marketing tool.
I am one of the 15 million Facebook users who check and or update their Facebook daily. I will admit it; Facebook is taking over our lives. There are advertisements and all types of other marketing tools on the website now. It’s the best way to communicate with people you don’t see everyday. I think that within the next few years the amount of users will almost double. It is growing that fast. And every age is using it too. Everyone from my aunt to my 14 year old sister has an account. It’s not just for college students anymore. As Mark Zuckerberg puts it, Facebook will be a standardized way of communication and marketing.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/20/markets/thebuzz/?postversion=2009022012