Facebook has just announced at the TechCrunch50 that they now have 300 million active users, continuing their phenomenal growth. And, what is more, Facebook just went cash flow positive, allowing them unlimited space and time to develop, evolve, and grow their business. World, get over it, Facebook is most assuredly not a startup, but a gigantic company. This firm rules such a larg roost, that indeed it is a global powerhouse, with users in every country in the world.
Facebook is on stage at the moment, so we might not get every single detail, but what they are saying incredible. In the first 3 minutes of the launch of vanity URL’s, 200,000 people selected a name. In the first hour 1 million names were taken. Phenomonal that this happened without even a second of downtime. Facebook is a giant.
The cash flow announcement came was quite a surprise, given that recently Facebook was not expecting to be cash flow positive until on an operating basis (look it up) until 2010. Even in the recession, Facebook is growing its finances almost as quickly as its user counts, it would seem.
Facebook has been on quite a product tear as well, putting out @ mentions, Facebook Lite, and the Facebook 3.o iPhone app. Today, Facebook is launching Facebook Prototypes, to showcase some of the developments from the Facebook hackathons. This will allow Facebook to get more feedback more quickly, to ensure that indeed they are barking up the right trees and keeping the website on the cutting edge.
It does seem that indeed there is nothing in the near future that can cause Facebook more than slighting damage. The company is exploding in size, and in revenues, and in features, something that some other company can only claim part of. Up the irons, Facebook is still the social networking king.
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The Facebook presentation continued to include a lengthy discussion of Facebook connect, and some extremely rehearsed paen to startups. They continue to harp on their 300 million users. Smug bastards!
