Facebook is a phenomenon

Tom Sangala June 21, 2017

327 1 minute read

“Facebooks’ software makes information viral” David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect, page 7, Simon & Shuster, 2010 edition.

Curved from a whiteboard in Harvard’s Kirkland House in 2003 by a the son of a dentist father and a psychologist mother, Mark Zuckerberg, The Facebook, as was known then, became a social fabric for students.

At Harvard University, status trumps academics; whilst there, I am told, you enroll courses, not because you like them, but because somebody important is in there.

Facebook is today more powerful than governments and movements. A Columbian civil engineer with gusto for computer technology scared off the entire Revolutionary Armed Forces for Columbia (Farc) into releasing hostages with a soft gun; a Facebook group.

Facebook is gargantuan market place. According to statistics by Zephoria, Facebook has 1.94 billion monthly active billion users worldwide. This means one thing; Facebook is too vast for you to ignore.

1.28 billion Facebook users actively log onto Facebook every day. The “Like” and “Share” buttons are viewed across 10 million websites daily. In Europe alone, with Brexit or not, 307 million people are on Facebook.

Marketers will not fail to tell you that the prime demographic market is between 25 and 34. And this consists 29.7 percent of Facebook users.

The growth of Facebook is exponential; five new profiles are created every second. In just 60 seconds, 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated and 136,000 photos are uploaded. The highest traffic occurs mid-week between 1 – 3 PM .

Facebook is not all about nirvana. There are 83 million fake profiles (Source: CNN). Not all these are the devil’s incarnates, sometimes these may be professionals doing research.

Turning to Africa, out of 1,246,504,865 people that comprise 16 percent of the global total, only 343,121,578 people are internet users representing 28.3 percent penetration. Out of these, 146,637,000 are on Facebook.

With a population of 18,298,679 as of March, 31, 2017, Malawi has 1,670,839 internet users which is 9.1 percent internet penetration. Out of these 720,000 are on Facebook.

You need not trust my figures, verify them with Internet World Stats, but the point is that, Facebook is today’s market warfare. You ignore it at your own peril. I rest my case.