Tuesday, Dec. 08, 2009
The Site that Ate the Internet
Facebook just keeps getting bigger: The social network that started 2009 with 150 million members signed up No. 200 million in April, and by September it had amassed 300 million — an average growth rate this year of about 550,000 new members a day. And with that growth came new demographics: 71% of Facebook users now live outside the U.S., and many of them are older than the site's original college-age demographic. But even more surprising than Facebook's exponential popularity was the announcement that, for the first time ever, the company was making money. Not too shabby for a start-up run by a 25-year-old Harvard dropout.