First, some data and insights from a talk given by NYU professor Scott Galloway :
- Facebook now accounts for 10% of all time spent on the internet. More people around the world spend more time on Facebook that any other site.
- "People are leaving the internet and spending more time on social media platforms. There's an emerging generation for which Facebook is their OS. They don't leave it all day."
- Currently, Facebook has 580m users. If we apply Moore's Law to this we can envision this user group doubling in 18 months to 1 billion – perhaps exceeding 20% of all time spent online. And as we've witnessed so far, as Facebook gets bigger, it tends to grow even faster.
- If Facebook were to account for 40%-50% of time spent online, then effectively Facebook has become the internet.
Then there's this factoid from today's Wall Street Journal: In February, more than one-third of all online display ads in the U.S. appeared on Facebook – more than 3x Yahoo, its closest rival.
Perhaps this is why I chuckle every time I receive an email from classmates.com.
