Facebook gets a 'Like' from one billion users; offers 'thanks' to us all

Facebook's announcement of reaching one billion users each month was the biggest "like" of their existence.

This was big enough for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sign his name at the top of the news release. He wanted to give a big "thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you."

I say "well done" to Zuckerberg for having the vision and innovation to make Facebook what it is today. But the toughest part is probably still yet to come, as Facebook is now a public company and expectations are even higher when you're dealing with financial performance.

This kind of growth is not bad for a company that has only been around since 2004. One of their competitors, Linkedin, officially launched a year earlier in May 2003 and they've only managed to attract around 175 million users.

Another competitor in the social media space, MySpace, also launched in 2003 and I hear they're trying to make a comeback after being acquired by Specific Media in June 2011. Twitter — another social media outfit that I like a lot — unveiled their sign in 2006 in the city with the Golden Gate Bridge. Around six years later, I've seen published numbers of 90 to 175 million registered users who say what they want to say in 140 characters or less. If you're looking at total Twitter accounts, the number is estimated to be even higher at around 500 million.

The youngest of the social media bunch — Google+ — is probably the closest challenger to Facebook with around 250 million users since 2011. According to Facebook, they hit 100 million users in August 2008, which is four years after they started up. If you grab a calculator and start pecking around, Google+'s growth rate is on the fast track, but not likely to catch up with Facebook no time soon.

This kind of success makes you wonder what is it about Facebook that causes us to sign on the first thing in the morning, check out mobile devices throughout the day and switch to a new window on the desktop computer when the boss is not looking. Then we run straight home after work home and get on the home computer to check Facebook again and again until after midnight. One billion people just can't get enough of Facebook.

Facebook released a few demographics along with the bragging rights to "one billion users" that give a little insight into what a typical Facebook users might look like.

The typical age was around 26 in the early years and has progressively gotten younger along the way. All of you Facebook buffs have given out 1.13 trillion "likes' since Facebook added the feature in February 2009. The "like button" was acquired from Facebook's acquisition of social networking site FriendFeed during that same year.

When the ability to upload a photo into Facebook was added in the fall of 2006, we all thought that was just grand and have since uploaded around 265 million photos of people, places and things from Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the United States and other countries.

So Facebook is certainly on its way to being a fairy tale of a company, if it can figure out the Wall Street part and make enough money to gather 'likes" from investors. Since the initial public offering, or IPO, on May 18 when the stock closed at $38.23, it hasn't seen that kind of a price since and remains down about 40 percent for the year.

But despite the stock woes, having one billion users is quite impressive and Facebook's Zuckerberg says it is simply "the things that connect us."

Although I've been hanging out on Google+ more with all the tech fanatics that seem to gather there, I guess I'll go check my Facebook page now.

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Facebook arrives on Wall Street looking for a 'Like'

Now that we know Facebook has a market value of $104 billion, the next sixty-four thousand question for some of us will be should I buy stock.

If you can answer that question successful, in several years you could be very rich. Or you could be the Facebook fan who lost their shirt.

If you're thinking about it, maybe a closer look at this fairy-tale company will help sway your mind. There is a lot behind the simple "Like" button and your updates.

Facebook has been around since 2004, when it was founded by current CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with a few other Harvard University technology wizards.

Who would have known that Zuckerberg, now a newlywed as of Saturday, would grow Facebook into one of the world's top social networking websites, which has around 11 offices in the United States, with main digs being in Menlo Park Calif., and 18 or more offices scattered around the globe.

You'll probably be surprised to find out, that according to Facebook's website, 80% of monthly users are outside of the U.S. and Canada. So maybe that's why they need almost twice as many international offices as they have U.S. offices and felt compelled to make Facebook available in more than 70 languages.

So if Zuckerberg wanted to brag, he could go on for hours about how he started in a dormitory room and now runs a company worth a lot of billions. But according to Zuckerberg, he just simply wants to "make the world more open and connected."

But there is another sixty-four thousand question looming that has to do with whether Facebook can be montetized going forward to satisfy the investors appetite for profits. Now Facebook will have face the heat when monthly, quarterly and annual financial reports come around.

I imagine, like all other Internet-based companies, Facebook will rely on advertising and maybe – are your ready – user fees at some point. The latter is my thinking only, but with the emerging trend of paying for digital content, I wouldn't put it out of the question.

If Facebook ask us to reach for our wallets at some point, I imagine some of the 901 million fans would scatter to other social networks or suddenly decide that updating your status for all to see is not as crucial as it once was.

I don't update my own timeline enough, but I like what others are doing with their updates, the 300 million photos that are uploaded daily and other social aspects of their lives. It's very entertaining.

Facebook is likely to continue to grow by snapping up innovative companies like Instagram, a photo-sharing service and most recently, Karma, which is built around notification of important events and instant gifts.

At this point, I'm bullish on Facebook, with is easy for me to say, since I'm not an investor or shareholder and passed on any of the 180,000,000 shares of stock that Facebook was offering. But they had a decent opening day on Friday and finished slightly up at $38.23 rather than down from their initial offering price of $38.

Everyone will be watching what happens today, the rest of this week, and the months and years ahead.

The pressure is on for Facebook.

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