Since Google+ has started its counter, people started called Facebook as the ‘750 million unit’, but yesterday Facebook confirmed that the unit has fattened in size and its now a 800 million+ unit. This was announced at the F8 conference in San Francisco. However, the conference from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s end was on the new products in the keynote. Zuckerberg had earlier even noted that Facebook is the world’s most popular social network’s user base is active, stating that in 24 hours before there were more than 500 million users overall.
The confirmation for the user count was given by Facebook’s chief technology officer, Bret Taylor, in a news conference. There was yet another update from Taylor’s end, which was that more than 350 million people use Facebook on mobile devices each month.
Facebook has on its part trying to tap in users and a number of launch partners are even taking part in Facebook’s new “social graph” apps. There had been over three dozen partners who had their contribution in building of apps for the redesigned, sharing-focused Facebook. The partners here include, Netflix and Hulu in the video section, Electronic Arts, Zynga, Disney and Kabam in the gaming section and Spotify, Mog, Rdio, IHeartRadio and upstart Turntable.FM for the music build.
However, as expected, Facebook has worked on its progress in the mobile department, which has been majorly for Apple and Google devices. Some still might have a lingering thought that the working is only for the users and for Facebook’s progress on the whole as Facebook seems to be raising its stakes against these two major rivals.
Facebook is looking forward to be an all round user-stopper for finding music, movies, news, books and even recipes. The social networking giant has an advantage too as while its major competitors, Apple and Google, have an App Store and an app market for Android respectively, Facebook is making apps outside of Facebook and then integrating them with Facebook. Moreover, for the future, Facebook has no plans for an app store too. This gives it the ‘flexibility’ advantage, which would help it to move forward, without any roadblocks in this section.
For the same, Taylor said after the keynote, “We’re not really planning on having an app store.” He even noted that new apps on Facebook are usually discovered by users when they come across an app on their own or when their friends use and app and its published on the friend’s wall. He said, “That kind of serendipity is what’s driving app discovery and every feature on Facebook, really.”
Google+ might be on an unknown track as for now, but recently it opened its entry for everyone, which moved up the user count to 43 million+, which was a noticeable 15 million+ increase from the last noted 28 million user count.
After the keynote, there were a number of related links shared by Facebook, which were posted as for reference to the major announcements that were made yesterday:
User blog post: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150289612087131
Developer blog post: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/563/
F8 press tab: http://www.facebook.com/f8