“Four hundred million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine registered Facebook users… 500 million!”

Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg, who has managed to secure the lives and social habits of more than eight percent of the world’s population in just six and a half years. While it’s a little premature to begin singing “He’s got the whole world in his hands”, Zuckerberg’s certainly on the right path.

What a remarkable achievement. In January 2009, Facebook had 150 million registered users. In March 2010 that figure had raced to 400million. Now it stands at over 500million, with the magic one billion the next major milestone on the Facebook social media agenda.

It’s been a giddy few months for Zucks (as one of his 500million registered social networker’s, I’ve earned the right to call him by that). Not content with a casual chat with the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, he’s now busily preparing for the UK October launch of Facebook the Movie (well ok, ‘The Social Network’). I hope it’s a joke. But with the international Facebook obsession in full swing, it’s probably not.

I don’t really need to feed you statistics about the amount of time people spend (or should that be waste?) on Facebook, because I’m sure you’ve already checked your news feed at least three times today. And you will probably do so again after you finish reading this blog.  

But don’t worry. You’re not a freak. If Facebook was a country, its following would make it the third largest population in the world so you’re protected by the old rule of thumb: safety in numbers. Ignore the potential for hacking into your account and the risk of fraudulence/defamation/spam/computer viruses. What are the chances, eh?!

Just think. When Zucks was a Harvard University student in 2004, he created a monster which would guarantee him security and wealth for the rest of his life. His venture began focussing on American college students, allowing  it to spread to international universities, before releasing the floodgates to draw in anyone and everyone.

What’s the legacy?

I suppose it’s brought us all closer together or some other clichéd crap like that. In essence, we’re just inherently nosy. We want to know people’s relationship statuses, we want to have conversations with people from all over the world, we want to laugh at funny posts and photographs, and we want to do a good PR job on our own profiles. It’s also a marketers dream- a sea of people to sell, advertise and promote the latest project, campaign or slogan. And we love it.

But you know something has gone out of control when your parents get involved. An instant message from your Dad somehow removes the kudos and exclusivity that Facebook once had for my early-20’s generation. It doesn’t get any better when they start browsing through your wall, flicking through your tagged photographs which date back to 2006…

Facebook has even undertaken its place as the leading online social media memorial service for the deceased. When your loved ones die, Facebook recommends ‘memorializing’ the deceased’s profile:

“When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased’s privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates.

“Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.”

So there you have it. We’re on our way to ‘cradle-to-grave’ territory. Perhaps there will be no need for birth and death certificates in the future. Parents will announce new baby Fred to the world through their status, several hundred people will ‘like it’ for confirmation purposes, and Fred will have his own profile erected to mark the occasion.

Fred will then be given his own password (when he’s deemed old enough to use it responsibly) to browse and snoop around his friend’s, their friend’s and other random profiles for the next 70-80 years, until he dies, whereby one (or maybe two!) of his 6,500 friends will inform Facebook in order to create a memorial.

Fantastic. Zucks reckons he needs just four remaining countries until he has the full set (of the useful ones, obviously)- Russia, Japan, China and Korea. And once Facebook is the leading social media network in these four international powerhouses, who knows where we’ll be going….