Zuck brushes aside dull 750m Facebook sign-ups metric

It's all about sharing ... bitch

By Kelly Fiveash, 7th July 2011

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Facebook's stalkerbase grew by one-third in the past year, boss Mark Zuckerberg confirmed yesterday as he announced a video chat deal with Skype.

The dominant social network now has 750 million people signing into Facebook across the globe.

However, Zuckerberg isn't bothered about that number, and said his firm wasn't fussed about reporting the metric because he said the rate of sharing data was "growing at an exponential rate".

He added that Facebookers were sharing over four billion different things each day.

Zuckerberg said that sharing was "at the elbow of the curve" and that "all the apps that you're going to use will be dramatically different."

He does hope to reach one billion sign-ups soon, but said the number of registered or active users wasn't an "interesting metric".

Zuck is also convinced that social networking has now come of age.

"We're not everywhere yet, but there's this clear arc where the world generally believes it is going to be everywhere," he said, before adding "whether it's us or somebody else doing it."

Google released its latest social network effort last week, of course. And Facebook's founder has been playing around with it.

But arguably this is where that 750 million userbase, alongside the huge data grab, becomes important. Google+, which is yet to launch fully, will need to hit the same big numbers, and quickly, if it wants to truly rival – or indeed beat – Facebook. ®

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery