Facebook Reaches Thirty Million - What Does that Mean to the World?

According to a posting in the official Facebook Corporate Blog, today Facebook passed thirty million members. With this announcement of growth comes a wave of announcements of venture capitalists, developers, angel investors and others joining into a Facebook "gold rush".

Facebook unleashed this growth by moving away from exclusive networks where you needed to connect via an e-mail address with your college domain or corporate domain to being completely open. It expects 75% of its members to be non-college age in a very short time.

This growth of members is also accompanied by an explosive growth of applications. Many of these new Facebook applications are coming from small innovative companies, including some run by 1 to 3 people. Facebook has allowed them to scale by using the Facebook platform to distribute,receive user feedback, and support the project. This tells me that the barriers to entry are very low at this point and that there will be a rush to attract large audiences. The difference between a Facebook application is generally its simplicity or ease of use - no steep learning curve. Most applications can be installed and mastered within minutes.

Also an indication this week of Facebook's emerging clout, is the arrival of the Facebook COO at an annual conference of media moguls sponsored each year by Allen and Co. These include Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Google's leaders, and a host of other A-listers. Why is this important? Media companies are looking at ways to protect their brands from the onslaught of changes brought by the digital age. Facebook provides them various ways in which they might find a new distribution method of digital media.

The last part for those not so familiar with Facebook is its viral distribution capabilities by allowing you to see every minute of the day, what applications your "friends" have installed or removed. Also the applications which appear on friend's profile pages also show even more clearly how the applications look and feel. There is even the ability to grab them for free from those profile pages by clicking the "Share" button within each application. No need to download to your computer and then reinstall. This is all done on the web.

So congratulations Facebook! It is quite a milestone. Facebook is a true platform for the new "eWarriors"