facebook is about to hit 400,000 members in the South African network, sitting at 399,294 at this very moment. The growth in the last two weeks, in SA network has been phenomenal. On Sunday, 14th October there were 360,000 members… in 13 days the network has grown by 11%. There are currently around 50 million active members worldwide.

Many cynics of social networking sites say that facebook is just a “fad” and members will soon move onto something else, but with the continual renewal of applications and the easy-to-use format which provides a phenomenal platform for communicating with friends online, this is one “fad” that aint going anywhere.

To add credibility to this statement, a deal has just been concluded with Microsoft who have agreed to invest $240 million into facebook for a 1.6 percent stake in the company; this then values the site at around $15 billion. Under this agreement Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising partner until 2011; this says to me that Microsoft do not see this social networking site as a “fad”; they beat Yahoo and Google to the deal table, who were also in talks to acquire an interest in the company.

facebook will be making a major announcement on the 6th November, in New York, regarding a new way of advertising online which enables companies to better target ad placement ensuring that they can block unwanted associations. This announcement happens to be at the same time as the Adtech “business of modern marketing” conference is being held.

The US online advertising industry is currently at around $40 billion and analysts predict that it will double in size within three years; with online advertsing in South Africa said to be at around R200 million for 2007 we have alot of “catching up” to do and marketers need to understand the value of social networking sites…..these are places that lots of people do spend there precious time out of choice and will continue to do so. facebook has also announced recently that 50% of their members are over 25 years of age, so it is not just a youth site anymore.

…..I know where I would be planning to spend some of my marketing budget….

Yes!!, you may have noticed I have been blogging about facebook a few times already, but what the heck.

I just thought I’d direct you to the following URL to give to all the juicy information about Facebook.

The full Facebook Biography – http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/

That’s it, no more, rest easy…

Amidst the news that many corporate are now starting to ban Facebook access from offices due to the fact that employees spend too much time on it, Facebook is growing at a rate of about 750.000 people per week world-wide. The South African network currently totals 221.539 people.

What corporate don’t realise however is that by banning Facebook it is just growing even faster – forbidden fruit always tastes better. And if they can’t access it from their office pc they are now starting to access it from their cellphones.

The Facebook site is optimised for viewing from a cellphone, which makes it easy to use. And when people update their status from their phone, it tells the friends that you are posting from a phone. It is creating huge interest on the possibilities of mobile websites.

If you can access Facebook from your cell, what else can you do?

By customizing Websites for handsets they give people the opportunity to access services they want at the touch of a button at anytime. And that means if you have a consumer facing business, you’d better take mobile websites seriously.

Sandra Olivier
sandra@longtail.co.za