Facebook likely to reach the ‘1 billion users’ milestone by August 2012

On the basis of the stupendous growth which the social networking giant Facebook has been witnessing of late, digital marketing firm iCrossing has recently predicted that Facebook is likely to surpass the ‘1 billion users’ milestone in August this year.

As of now, Facebook has over 800 million users, with 50 percent of them reportedly logging in to the social network every day. Despite the fact that the growth of the social network in the developed nations has been witnessing a slowdown, iCrossing has explained that the developing markets will continue to play a crucial role in terms of increasing numbers of users.

The iCrossing prediction that Facebook will hit one billion active users around August 2012 has been arrived at with the help of a process of “linear regression” on the statistics from 2008-end. An analysis of the data has led iCrossing to the conclusion that while Facebbok was initially, during 2006-mid-2008, growing at an exponential rate, the growth has been more “in a linear fashion” in the recent times.

According to iCrossing, “developing countries” like India and Brazil are making immense contributions to the overall growth of Facebook social network, with these two countries now having 36 million and 30 million users respectively.

Commenting on Facebook’s growth, iCrossing's Gregory Lyons said that while the growth of the social network is picking up considerably in the emerging markets, the growth is also still on the rise in the early-adopter countries like the US and the UK.