750 million; the number of Facebook users as of fall 2011. In 2010, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg reported that 175 million Facebook users were logging in every single day and that number has only climbed during the past year with more than 375 million people logging in and spending 700 billion minutes on Facebook each month.
Facebook has been the only medium to surpass the number of daily visitors that Google experiences. Okay, Facebook only actually surpassed Google for one day, but on a daily basis, Facebook is fairly neck and neck with Google.
But Facebook is not a search engine. It is a place to connect with other people, not to find information. Or is it?
Due to the sheer size and popularity of Facebook, according to Tony Bradley, PCWorld, "When the dot.com rush hit, businesses raced to set up websites just for the sake of being on the Web. Now, Facebook is almost a Web of its own within the Web, and businesses feel compelled to set up a presence on the social network even if they don't really know why, or what they're supposed to do with it."
Bradley is right on the money with his observation and Facebook is on task now to overtake Google as the place to advertise your business. If you are not branching out into the world of social networking, you may find yourself losing customers and "fans" to other savvy businesses already exploiting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.