Facebook Records One Billion Users in a Single Day
By Jean-Luc LeClair
Social media has certainly become an integral part of human connection over the past decade. From the fall of MySpace to the advent of Facebook, we form and reinforce social ties while increasing the spread of information through the use of social websites. Social media outlets have recently been the largest source of information distribution, with the potential to reach billions. In fact, on 27 of August 2015, Facebook became the first site to have over one billion users log on throughout the span of a single day. “This brings us one step closer to a more connected world,” Zuckerberg purported; “a world where everyone can voice their opinions.” In the context of social media, Facebook truly is a giant among the rest. According to the Pew Research Center, of all internet users, 78% use Facebook with next largest sites being LinkedIn and Pinterest, capturing only 28% of internet users. This data points to the reach that media coming through Facebook has. It would not be implausible to consider Facebook a giant component of connectivity. The theory of “The Six Degrees of Separation” seems more reasonable now than ever before. With 1/7th of the world’s population connecting to social media via a single outlet, a chain-link of users connected by way of ‘friends of friends’ is formed. The simple ‘click-of-a-button’ allows information to spread easily across the network of people and is accessible not only to those holding an account, but also to those in contact with a user.
From social media campaigns such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to catastrophic events such as the earthquake in Nepal, the spread of information is faster than ever and can be perceived by more people than ever. With greater information passing through channels like Facebook, the traditional barriers of communication and exchange are shrinking. These shrinking barriers have been essential to idea formation, expression of thought, creativity and innovation over the past decade. Technologies and their uses have improved due to the connectedness that sites like Facebook allow for. Because information of all kinds is now reachable through internet sources, a greater number of people are no longer bound by their environment and the resources they have immediate access to. They are able to reach out across a vast network of online data and grab pieces of information that would otherwise be unknown to them. This ability is truly driving advances in more ways than one. For these reasons, being connected through a site like Facebook is becoming a must, and we may well see a large increase in users as access to the internet continues to grow.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/one-billion-people-used-facebook-in-a-single-day-this-week-s#.vjj993Axeb
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/