Zuckerberg: Facebook Will Hit One Billion Users (One Day)

Did Mark Zuckerberg make news during his onstage interview at the big Cannes ad confab today? Not if this summation from the Guardian is correct.

The Facebook CEO did say there is “almost a guarantee” that the company will double its user base from 500 million to one billion, which is pretty heady stuff, but also pretty hazy stuff. (We already know that Facebook is really big.)

And Zuckerberg again danced around the question of Facebook’s eventual IPO. But unless he flat-out declares that the company will never go public, there’s almost no reason to ask him about it: Facebook is quite clearly headed for an IPO, one day.

Zuckerberg’s summation of Facebook’s global hegemony is worth pondering for a minute, though:

Facebook’s global domination is almost complete, he said. “We are down to just four countries where we aren’t the leading social network.”

Zuckerberg added that in Russia Facebook had just 1 million users, the kind of numbers that saw AOL sell off Bebo and ITV relinquish Friends Reunited. But in Facebook’s case, growth is “doubling every six months”, according to Zuckerberg, and Japan and Korea have similar user bases.

He said that Facebook can tell when an explosive growth “tipping point” is about to be reached by who is “friending” who. When Facebook first launches in a country, nearly all the friend connections are with foreign Facebook users.

“We know that a country has tipped when local-to-local connections outnumber local to foreign,” he added. “It is a long-term thing [and with regard to the four left to tip] we are probably not going to win in six months, not in a year [but] things look promising in three to five years out.”

Meanwhile, if you want a really deep dive with Zuckerberg, check out Inside Facebook’s recent Q&A.