As I wrote on my recent twitter-message I spent the evening on Facebook tonight. The social pressure was growing over the last couple of weeks and today my tipping point has been reached: After being registered since September 2006, today is the day I really start to use Facebook.

Checking out facebook I found some nice statistics:
# Facebook has 31 mio active users (an active user means being active in the last 30 days)
# Facebook is growing with over 100’000 users per day and 3% per week (meaning doubling every six months)
# 50% of all active users visit the site every day
# More than 40 billion page views per month (meaning facebook surpassed eBay and is now No. 13 at Alexa)
# Facebook has raised more than $38 mio in venture capital in three rounds
# Facebook has more than 300 employees (and more than 85 developers)
# Facebook has been launched in February 2004, reached 1 mio users in December 2004 and 10 mio users in autumn 2006.
# Over 1800 applications have been built on Facebook Platform (about 800 have more than 1000 users)
# The top 10 applications have all more than 3 mio users!

I also watched Mark’s f8 keynote launching Facebook Platform and learned the following:
# Facebook Platform will kick ass!
# It’s like an operating system and could create a new industry (social application industry)
# I’ve already installed two of my favorite applications: Twitter and Plazes. The twitter application has almost 30’000 users, the Plazes application has already 600 users.
# If they continue to grow this fast, Facebook could soon be one of my most used websites
# If you run a web-service (or a social network), you should build a Facebook application soon (or someone else will fill your niche)
# There could be a huge business opportunity for application developers

My application wishlist:
# XING
# LinkedIn
# StudiVZ
# Exsila
# memberYou

Open questions & open thoughts:
# Will StudiVZ be able to follow Facebook? In my opinion StudiVZ is in a very good position because Facebook is not very strong in central Europe. But will they be able to go from "Students" to "Everybody" in such a smooth way like Facebook? Or will StudiVZ sooner or later be aquired by Facebook?
# Microsoft is partnering with Facebook. My first thought was: Maybe Microsoft is preparing to buy or merge with Facebook one day? This could be the ticket for Microsoft to seriously come closer to Google.

Conclusion:
WOW!

More Links:
Flavio about Facebook
Wikipedia about Facebook
Russian Facebook (looks familiar? ;-) –> one of the fastest growing russian websites (comparison with StudiVZ)
Dutch Facebook
Australian Facebook
Chinese Facebook
Turkish Facebook