I have a Facebook account. My wife, Jude, does, too. Since our trip back to Africa in May, she’s been raving about all of her long lost friends she has been reconnecting with (virtually, of course) through Facebook. Some of which Jude hasn’t seen or heard of since she was three feet tall.

I have to admit, I’ve never been much of a social networking guy. I spend way too much time in front of a computer normally — I don’t need to stick around and see who’s doing what. Believe me, I’m not being nasty; it’s just not my thing. But, it’s my nature as a web designer to want to know what is the draw. Is the site really cool? Is it some über-app linking people across the globe? Is it easy to use?

At first I laughed at them. My wife — and so many of my family and friends — were spending their time searching Facebook profiles. The laughter got louder and more frequent, until a few days ago. Jude hurried me into our home office to see her latest Facebook contact: the mother of one of her childhood friends from Zimbabwe. Let me repeat that in some other terms. An older woman entering the prime of her life having lived her entire existence in the rural farming nation in the breadbasket of Africa has a Facebook account. A country where inflation is now 10,000% and Internet access is as common as seeing a Jackass penguin riding the subway in New York. The real kicker is she’s not the only one. There are hundreds from Zimbabwe alone, not to mention South Africa (where things are only a little better).

Yesterday, ComScore released statistics on Facebook’s success in the past year.

In the months prior to allowing open registration, Facebook.com’s traffic hovered at approximately 14 million visitors per month. However, after Facebook opened its doors to the general public, visitation accelerated to reach a level of 26.6 million visitors in May 2007, up 89 percent versus the same month last year and 100 percent versus September 2006.

…

The most dramatic growth occurred among 25-34 year olds (up 181 percent), while 12-17 year olds grew 149 percent and those age 35 and older grew 98 percent.

181 percent in 25-34 year olds. Absolutely remarkable. Now, before we all jump up and down, CNET.com reminds us:

It should be noted that any Internet statistics still ought to be taken with a (small) grain of salt. The industry hasn’t yet come to a concrete conclusion on which methodologies work best, and so many Web stats firms, ComScore included, have taken some criticism in recent months.

Here are some more statistics from ComScore’s website.

Part of the mystery behind their success is Facebook originally only allowed Harvard students and a few other elitist schools to register. They then expanded to allow corporations and colleges from around the world. It wasn’t until last year when they opened registration for everyone. And this is when the deluge of traffic began.

I’ll be watching closely to see how Facebook handles the pressure of nearly 16 billion page views — and growing– per month.

Amidst all these statistics, the one that truly stands out for me is Average Minutes Per Visitor. In February 2007, that number reached 200. Two hundred average minutes per visitor. Do Facebook users have jobs?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 9 am and is filed under applications, friends, people, technology, websites.