The continuing rise of Facebook

4^th February 2010 marked the 6^th birthday of Social Networking giants Facebook. Today, 25-year-old Marc Zuckerberg is the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Just six years ago, he was launching an experimental little website out of his student digs at Harvard University. The site soon expanded beyond the Harvard fraternity to other college campuses, with membership reaching 1 million in under a year.

By the end of 2005, with secondary school and international students on board, Facebook had grown to more than 5.5 million members. In another year, there were 12 million users. Here in 2010, Facebook claims over 350 million active users and is, arguably, the most popular social networking site in the world.

In Europe, it accounts for over 30% of time spent social networking and over 4% of all minutes spent online. Figures that are quite outstanding when you take into account that Facebook is a single site competing with the entire world wide web.

With the proliferation of Facebook-capable mobile phones, plus Facebook Connect opening up the service further still (onto Xbox Live, Sony's PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo DSi, for instance), there's plenty of room for it to grow.

There is a strong argument that the use of social networking is useful to businesses and that management should embrace it rather than dismiss it.

“Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact” Peter Bradwell, Demos

Using networking technology in the right way to build closer links with employees and potential customers could boost productivity, innovation and create a more democratic working environment.

Firms are increasingly using networking software to share documents and collaborate in ideas, are you?

Have you given in to the social networking movement? Have you had a defining moment? Did you participate in the Rage against the machine protest? Did you participate in Doppelganger week?