FACEBOOK (2)

Facebook now has over a billion active users. That's a fair chunk of the world's total population, though the company's popularity is not evenly distributed. While in North America and Australia, more than 40% of the population are members, and in Europe almost 30%, Facebook is heavily outgunned in places such as Russia and China by local alternatives. VKontakte in Russia, for instance, has 100 million members to Facebook's just seven million.

Having said that, a billion customers is still pretty good for a company that started less than a decade ago. And all the indications are that that customer base will continue to grow in the future, as Africa and Asia get more and more hooked up to the internet. It's just a pity that I still don't really get Facebook.

Walter Blotscher