4 ms·

Seriously asking: why not? Do you just not believe that scale is possible? I hadn't thought about it, but let's make a few assumptions and see how realistic th

Seriously asking: why not? Do you just not believe that scale is possible? I hadn't thought about it, but let's make a few assumptions and see how realistic that is. * 7.7B people in the world. * Subtract 1.4B people in China (even though plenty of those people actually have FB and login when abroad or via VPN, there are more countries where Facebook is blocked, plus outliers where usage is low). * We don't want to count people who are really young. There's also a decay in popularity related entirely to age. I'm going to use ages 15-64, simply because the World Bank made it easy to get an estimate: ~65% of the global population[0]. * We have (7.7-1.4) x .65 = ~4.01B people between 15 and 64 years old in countries with Facebook. Given that Facebook growth skews towards countries with younger populations, I'd say this is a hard floor on what I'll call the "eligible Facebook population". 50% is high at first glance, but keep in mind that we've already excluded most of the low hanging fruit that would make it definitionally impossible for someone to use Facebook. I'd say their number is high, but not spit-take high. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.1564.TO.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.1564.TO.ZS

Nelson69 7y ago
Plus there are a ton of over 64 folks on there... Riddle me this: why would they lie? Shareholders could sue, since they try to infer some value from it there could be other legal consequences. If they only had, say 1billion daily active users instead of 1.56billion, would that really water their value down much? I don't see a competitor coming to eat their lunch that would rationalize lying about that stuff.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  Flat growth numbers would water down their value, particularly in developed markets, as we saw last July. But more to your point, these number are so astoundingly high, and have been for years that you're really asking "why would they ever have overestimated these numbers?", which gets to the same point.
- polishTar 7y ago
  Also, why would they even care about reporting high numbers? Facebook's leadership doesn't have any of the typical business pressures to please investors. Leadership (Zuckerberg) already holds majority voting power, and Facebook is fully self sufficient financially (no concerns about needing to raise more capital at poor prices).
  - the_watcher 7y ago
    They're definitely in a unique position, but there's always simply not wanting to crush their investor relations department, not that I have any evidence or suspicions that this factors in at all.
bliteben 7y ago
This is a great analysis and basically where I was going in my head with this, but you are missing one critical fact, how much of the world has internet access. I think if we just assume that number is 75% which seems to be way too high just looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage. Then we can see a better picture of how their numbers are something that any accounting firm should have a hard time certifying. I would certainly believe 50% of the total population for MAU or numbers hovering near it for the US/C and probably most of Europe for monthly active users. That matches my anecdotal observations, however they claim 75% of the total pop for US/C and 48.9% of the total pop for Europe MAU. To think that somehow they claim the rest of the world has over 50% of its population using facebook once a month, when even Europe doesn't seem to meet this threshold just seems..... I have just noticed that they try to lump duplicate and false accounts together and give a number of 11%, but then later they state that false accounts are actually 5% bringing the total fake accounts to at least 16%, which I still think is low, but it is getting to a point to where it may not be as clear cut fraud. I would bet their total account numbers would also be helpful in showing how many are duplicates or fake, but not sure they disclose that anywhere, probably due to their shadow accounts as well.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  Facebook generally groups their regions into North America, Latin America, APAC (Asia Pacific) and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), so the 50% "Europe" number you are referring to isn't really as comparable as "EU+Russia v. US", which seems to be an assumption you are making. I did consider people with internet access, I just didn't call it out. I think it's beyond reasonable that Facebook has >50% penetration of the total eligible Facebook population with internet access, and I'd believe upwards of 80%. Internet.org essentially exists because Facebook knows that they've been approaching this ceiling for years. Also, referring to duplicates+false as 11% and then false as 5% doesn't imply 11+5=16. It just means that "not unique individuals" is a superset of "not actually real people at all".
  - bliteben 7y ago
    It clearly says in the 1Q 10Q: Europe includes all users in Russia and Turkey and Rest of World includes all users in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. I do agree they probably do mean that mean a superset, the wording is kinda odd maybe to downplay the number of false accounts, which are the real issue not the duplicate ones. I still think these numbers are false, I think it is probably a service to the people working at instagram and whatsapp, that they aren't reporting these numbers, which basically require them to always go up.
Simon_says 7y ago
I have over a hundred Facebook accounts, so I’m helping!
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  I've been out of that game for 5-6 years, but I was managing about 1K accounts at my peak. Their fraud prevention stuff flagged a bunch of them but >50% of them are still active.
  - geekone 7y ago
    What were they used for?
    - type0 7y ago
      ah, let me guess... "marketing"
    - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
      Looking back it was so juvenile that I am embarrassed. But I used to sell popularity services for new businesses on MySpace and Facebook. I would get them high friend counts, lots of likes for their page, and even like or upvote certain posts make them appear more popular. It literally did nothing of real value and was a complete waste of time. And in the case of Facebook probably set them seriously behind in doing actual good marketing because their social graph was completely destroyed by the artificial campaigns.

Nelson69 7y ago

Plus there are a ton of over 64 folks on there... Riddle me this: why would they lie? Shareholders could sue, since they try to infer some value from it there could be other legal consequences. If they only had, say 1billion daily active users instead of 1.56billion, would that really water their value down much? I don't see a competitor coming to eat their lunch that would rationalize lying about that stuff.

the_watcher 7y ago
Flat growth numbers would water down their value, particularly in developed markets, as we saw last July. But more to your point, these number are so astoundingly high, and have been for years that you're really asking "why would they ever have overestimated these numbers?", which gets to the same point.
polishTar 7y ago
Also, why would they even care about reporting high numbers? Facebook's leadership doesn't have any of the typical business pressures to please investors. Leadership (Zuckerberg) already holds majority voting power, and Facebook is fully self sufficient financially (no concerns about needing to raise more capital at poor prices).
- the_watcher 7y ago
  They're definitely in a unique position, but there's always simply not wanting to crush their investor relations department, not that I have any evidence or suspicions that this factors in at all.

bliteben 7y ago

This is a great analysis and basically where I was going in my head with this, but you are missing one critical fact, how much of the world has internet access. I think if we just assume that number is 75% which seems to be way too high just looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage. Then we can see a better picture of how their numbers are something that any accounting firm should have a hard time certifying. I would certainly believe 50% of the total population for MAU or numbers hovering near it for the US/C and probably most of Europe for monthly active users. That matches my anecdotal observations, however they claim 75% of the total pop for US/C and 48.9% of the total pop for Europe MAU. To think that somehow they claim the rest of the world has over 50% of its population using facebook once a month, when even Europe doesn't seem to meet this threshold just seems..... I have just noticed that they try to lump duplicate and false accounts together and give a number of 11%, but then later they state that false accounts are actually 5% bringing the total fake accounts to at least 16%, which I still think is low, but it is getting to a point to where it may not be as clear cut fraud. I would bet their total account numbers would also be helpful in showing how many are duplicates or fake, but not sure they disclose that anywhere, probably due to their shadow accounts as well.

the_watcher 7y ago
Facebook generally groups their regions into North America, Latin America, APAC (Asia Pacific) and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), so the 50% "Europe" number you are referring to isn't really as comparable as "EU+Russia v. US", which seems to be an assumption you are making. I did consider people with internet access, I just didn't call it out. I think it's beyond reasonable that Facebook has >50% penetration of the total eligible Facebook population with internet access, and I'd believe upwards of 80%. Internet.org essentially exists because Facebook knows that they've been approaching this ceiling for years. Also, referring to duplicates+false as 11% and then false as 5% doesn't imply 11+5=16. It just means that "not unique individuals" is a superset of "not actually real people at all".
- bliteben 7y ago
  It clearly says in the 1Q 10Q: Europe includes all users in Russia and Turkey and Rest of World includes all users in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. I do agree they probably do mean that mean a superset, the wording is kinda odd maybe to downplay the number of false accounts, which are the real issue not the duplicate ones. I still think these numbers are false, I think it is probably a service to the people working at instagram and whatsapp, that they aren't reporting these numbers, which basically require them to always go up.

Simon_says 7y ago

I have over a hundred Facebook accounts, so I’m helping!

ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
I've been out of that game for 5-6 years, but I was managing about 1K accounts at my peak. Their fraud prevention stuff flagged a bunch of them but >50% of them are still active.
- geekone 7y ago
  What were they used for?
  - type0 7y ago
    ah, let me guess... "marketing"
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    Looking back it was so juvenile that I am embarrassed. But I used to sell popularity services for new businesses on MySpace and Facebook. I would get them high friend counts, lots of likes for their page, and even like or upvote certain posts make them appear more popular. It literally did nothing of real value and was a complete waste of time. And in the case of Facebook probably set them seriously behind in doing actual good marketing because their social graph was completely destroyed by the artificial campaigns.