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Facebook's 1 Billion Users: Why The Sky Is Still The Limit

This article is more than 10 years old.

First the numbers though - they look likely to keep on growing as Facebook tempts users in new geographies (Zuckerberg spent last week wooing the Russians!).

Among professionals in social media, Facebook is by far the most used platform - 85% of the 400 surveyed, report Facebook as their primary social channel, compared with 2% for Google + and 10% for Twitter. Facebook has incredible support in the professional community.

Even  in the, potentially jaded, experts' group 84% are still finding that Facebook friends share things that they find interesting. 75% said they still found something cool once a week. Only 7% of experts see Facebook being dead and buried within 10 years.

Betapond Marketing Director Richard Delevan says: "basically we have 59% saying that Facebook in 10 years will be much more significant than now - with a good sprinkling of doubters."

Doubters have three main causes for their skepticism.

1) Mobile - the view expressed here on Forbes by commentators like Eric Jackson that Facebook was ill prepared for the mobile future (and present).

2) The younger generation will adopt different platforms because Facebook's age profile is getting older.

3) China's political barriers could block Facebook's growth but, says Delevan, "as Chinese brands become more integrated with the developed world - and as more Western brands are owned or controlled from China, that will change because of the economic benefits to Chinese companies," of Facebook as a channel.

"We think that what's made Facebook get to this point is that it never sits still in the face of rivals. It's working hard to get mobile right while also trying to monetize it.

We have an interest, because we develop applications on the platform. But from here on out, on big projects such as Waterworks for Unilever (helping bring clean drinking water to 500m people by 2020), we develop on mobile first, then for desktop.

We think they're making great progress on mobile and we're happy to be pushing them on behalf of clients to go further, faster.

The network effects of Facebook seem strong to us. As people get older, they will opt into Facebook for different reasons - as it becomes a pervasive part of the consumer internet. As long as Facebook keeps making things more relevant for people, the fact that their older colleagues, friends, family are on Facebook will draw them in."

In other words the Facebook story still has a long way to run.

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