It took the social network less than five years to go from 1 billion monthly users to 2 billion.
It took the social network less than five years
to go from 1 billion monthly users to 2 billion.
“We’re
getting to a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all
the things that we can do to make social media the most positive force for good
possible,” Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox told TechCrunch about the
company’s new milestone. Thirteen years after launching and less than
five years after hitting 1 billion, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly active users.
Facebook
wants people to celebrate with a personalized “Good Adds Up” video
they can make and share here. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg played it cool
with this brief announcement
message.
Two
billion makes Facebook the largest social app in terms of logged-in users,
above YouTube’s 1.5 billion, WeChat’s 889 million, Twitter’s 328 million and
Snapchat’s estimated 255 million (extrapolated from its December 2015 ratio
when it had 110 million daily and 170 million monthly users). Beyond YouTube,
only Facebook’s other apps have more than 1 billion, including WhatsApp and
Facebook Messenger, with 1.2 billion each. Instagram might soon join that club
as it recently rocketed past 700 million.
Facebook’s
growth the last half decade has been fueled by the developing world. The
company has relentlessly optimized its app for cheap Android smartphones and
low-bandwidth connections. It’s added 746 million users in Asia and the Rest of
World region since hitting 1 billion users total. Meanwhile, it only added 41
million in the U.S. and Canada.
Despite
Facebook’s size and age, at 17 percent its user count is growing as fast or
faster than any year since 2012. And people aren’t using it less either. In
fact, 66 percent of Facebook’s monthly users return each day now compared to 55
percent when it hit 1 billion. If the teenaged social network isn’t as cool to
teenagers any more, it’s not showing in the big metrics.
But
neither does the colossal impact Facebook has had on society, which it’s now
trying to bend toward positivity with its new mission statement to “Give people the power to
build community and bring the world closer together.”
“There’s
definitely a deep sense of responsibility in every part of the company,” Cox
told TechCrunch. “We’re getting to the scale where we have to get much better
about understanding how the product has been used.” That’s why he’s been
traveling around the world doing user research. And it’s why Mark Zuckerberg
has been crisscrossing the country on a listening tour that many people
cynically assume is the start to a run for president, despite the CEO’s
denials.
Perhaps
stewarding a 2-billion-person community is responsibility enough to get out of
Silicon Valley and figure out how Facebook impacts people’s lives.
There
are the big, newsy things like suicides on Facebook Live and fears that fake
news got Donald Trump elected. But deeper down, there are even more complex
ramifications of a near ubiquitous social network. It can propel internet
addiction that alienates people, and facilitate the filter bubbles that polarize
society by reinforcing our opinions. Facebook has largely conquered its
competitors, giving it the slack to finally address the modern sociological
challenges that stem from its popularity.
Cox says
an important pattern Facebook is adopting is “When you think about very complex
systems that are affecting humanity, just being open about what’s happening.
And then for example in the case of something like suicide or bullying, going
and working with subject matter experts, getting the research on what’s the
best possible thing that we can do, and then talking to the world about it.” To
make the discussion about these tragic moments as accessible and productive as
possible, Facebook has taken to publishing transparency reports and explainers
about its policies and procedures.
“I live
with the constant goal of understanding, for every single thing that we do, how
do we maximize all that goodness, and curtail any way that it can be misused or
turned into something sad” Cox solemnly concludes.
If
getting to 1 billion was about building a product, and getting to 2 billion was
about building a user base, Facebook’s responsibility is to build empathy
between us as it reaches for 3 billion.
