Facebook 300 million users, now making money

Facebook now has over 300 million users worldwide. The thing that attracts my attention is the reason people facebooking! Why? Top on the list is checking out photos of women. lol! :D What more can I say?

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Facebook: 300 million people, checking out photos of women

(NECN: Ted McEnroe) - Just two months after Facebook hit the 250 million user mark, company founder Mark Zuckerberg says the company has now surpassed 300 million users. Zuckerberg made the announcement on the Facebook blog yesterday. He also noted that Facebook is now "cash flow positive," which seems to be what the rest of the world would call making money.

Zuckerberg pledges that despite the growth, he's determined to keep the staff manageable, noting that for 300 million users, they have fewer than 300 engineers.

But the company continues to add new functionalities in an effort to keep growing. There are reports that the company is working with a Boston-based firm, Vivox, to add voice chat to the Facebook chat, which could lead to opportunities for fan groups and businesses on the service.
And the company has now opened up the opportunity to try out applications being developed by Facebook engineers - as part of their 'Prototypes' project.

And if you're wondering what 300 million people are doing on Facebook - we're looking at pictures of women. A Harvard Business school professor, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, analyzed user activity (from 2007) and found that 70% of time spent on Facebook was spent looking at other people's profiles - two-thirds of the time, profiles of women.

Not surprisingly, men were the biggest voyeurs - 22% of the profile browsing was from men looking at profiles and pictures of women they didn't know. Another 19% was men looking at pictures of women they *do* know.

So, women were looking at men, right? Nope.

The researcher found that 17% of the profile gazing was from women looking at profiles and pictures of women they knew. Another 10% was women looking at women they didn't know. Then they got around to looking at men.

But there was a gender gap in the gazing. Men were more likely to look at women they didn't know. Women looked at women they knew. And if a man was listed as "in a relationship," the more likely he was to be checking out pictures of women he didn't know.

And that could be something to look at.


http://www.necn.com/Boston/SciTech/2009/09/16/Facebook-300-million-people/1253103375.html