Facebook Celebrates New Record

Our friends at Dutch Cowboys have reported that in the weekend after New Year’s Eve over 750 million photos were shared on Facebook. The year 2011 has started very brightly for Facebook indeed.

After the incredible success of 2010, which saw Facebook break the half BILLION users barrier and gain a serious foothold in countries such as Indonesia, Germany and Brazil it was hard to believe they could surpass that success.

But two days into the new year and already they are breaking new ground. It is reported that over 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month on Facebook, so from that perspective it may seem like a drop on a growing plate. But let’s look at it from another angle.

Flickr, one of the most popular photosharing communities on the web is said to host just over 5 billion images – Facebook reached 15% of that total in a single weekend. What’s more, it’s now also the second largest driver of  video traffic – with only Google ahead of them.

This clearly highlights that Facebook is moving away from simply providing a platform for inante chatter between college buddies and is becoming a full blown platform for content distribution and consumption.

The old update box which asked you to share what you were doing has been replaced by a combination of input commands, including the option to share links, photos and videos (both from the web and locally hosted on your PC) – another indication signallings Facebook move towards becoming your single provider of all content.

What do you think will happen to Facebook in 2011? Will it follow MySpace into the 2.0 graveyard, or will they become the new Google and transform marketing as we know it?