Facebook aiming for 1 billion users as it targets weaker markets

by Stevie Smith - Jun 24 2010, 10:15

Despite having solidified its position as undisputed champion within the social network arena, it would appear Facebook’s march of dominance is unlikely to end until the whole world has fallen to the irresistible lure of wall posts, status updates, multimedia sharing, and annoying app invitations.

More pointedly, with a staggering 500 million users already hooked, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has revealed plans to maintain growth by launching strategic expansion efforts in markets such as China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

“We are down to [the above] four countries that we are not the leading social network in,” said Zuckerberg during an address at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on Wednesday. “Now for the first time we are focused on doing some specific things in specific countries.” 

Although Zuckerberg did not reveal details on exactly how the social networking heavyweight will pursue its saturation strategy – either via enhanced services or perhaps a marketing campaign – he did intimate that success would mean “there’s a good chance of bringing this [Facebook] to a billion people.”

In related news, Zuckerberg this week admitted he has recently been guilty of paying too much attention to the market growth of rival social network and micro-blogging service Twitter.

“As good as I think they [Twitter] are, I think I personally just paid too much attention to it. I looked at their rate and thought if this continues for 12 months or 18 months, then in a year they’re going to be bigger than us,” he said during an interview with Inside Facebook.  

“It just turned out that their growth rate was kind of unnatural,” he added. “They got a lot of media attention, and it grew very quickly for a little period of time.”

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