What I found extremely interesting was that Facebook was still growing, and that the so called “fad” is rather something that everybody has incorporated into their lives, young and old.

The Stage at the Facebook Event

Here are a few stats:

• There are over 350 Million active users in the world (active meaning people that have logged in at least once a month)
• There are now more users outside the US, than within
• 250 billion page views per month
• over 250 platform apps
• Facebook is the 2nd largest video company after YouTube
• It’s the biggest driver of traffic to YouTube
• The application “Farmville” is bigger that Twitter with over 75 Million users

It’s truely amazing if we look at the above, I am one of those people who thought that Facebook would be another MySpace, huge growth intitially but then dies down over the years. Facebook is the opposite.

Lets look at the last stat, Farmville is an application that allows Facebook users to log into their accounts and “create” their own farms, building crops etc. as desired. Personally not my cup of tea but clearly 75 million people would disagree with me. What does this mean for Online Marketers, 75 million of your potential “market” are spending enough time on Facebook to watch crops grow…. CRAZY? Yes! But so true. This means that new age “online mambo jambo” as my parents call it, is actually a reality and if your brand is not online, then you are nowhere. The potential in this ever growing space is emmence, the saying : “Keep up or get left behind” comes to mind…

Lets look at some South Africa stats:

• Facebook has doubled in size over the past 12 months
• South Africa is 29th in terms of Facebook usage
• 1.18 billion monthly active page views
• over 51% of the online population have Facebook accounts
• over 46% of those return to the site daily
• Fastest growing audience is still 55+ age group
• The average user spends 27 minutes on Facebook
• The average user visits Facebook 2.2 times per day

Wow!! That’s all I can say, lets put the above into perspective for advertisers and marketers alike!

The bottom line is that online marketers have 27 minutes to get their “message” across on Facebook.  With this in mind a bell keeps ringing in my head saying : ” YOU MUST BE CRAZY NOT TO USE ONLINE ADVERTISING”, yes and that’s on repeat. Ok, so not only can brands now engage with their customers, but they can “hang-out” where their target market does, and they have 27 minutes, twice a day to grab their attention. Sounds like a gold mine to me.

You Decide!

“The power to define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities”