If social networking giant Facebook continues on its current growth trajectory, it will reach 1bn active users by August of this year, UK digital marketing agency iCrossing predicts.
Last September at F8, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed Facebook had breached the 800m member milestone.
“Using a process of linear regression on the data from the end of 2008 onwards, we expect Facebook to hit a billion active users around August 2012,” said iCrossing analytics expert Gregory Lyons.
“Looking at the data from 2006-mid-2008, it looks like Facebook was growing at an exponential rate, however, more recent data suggests it’s growing in a linear fashion.”
Where Facebook is growing and not growing
Lyons said Facebook’s growth has slowed or stopped in early adopter countries like the US and UK.
“However, developing countries such as India and Brazil have shown strong growth, with India growing from 22m users to 36m and Brazil going from 13m to 30m in the last nine months.
“Both are large countries with millions of potential users who have yet to sign up to Facebook, with only 3pc of India’s population on Facebook and 16pc of Brazil’s (compared to 49pc of America’s population or 47pc of the UK’s population), countries such as these will clearly contribute heavily to Facebook’s continued growth,” Lyons said.
