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Facebook: 300 Million Monthly Active Users, “Free Cash Flow Positive”
September 15th, 2009
| By Eric Eldon | 38 Comments » |
Facebook has just announced it has reached 300 million monthly active users around the world. The company has added 50 million users in just the 75 days, that’s 670,000 users per day. In mid-July, Facebook announced that it had reached 250 million.
Facebook’s global audience has doubled since the beginning of the year, adding 150 million new users since January. Notably, over 71% of Facebook’s userbase resides outside the United States – as of today, the company reports 85 million active American users.
Perhaps even more impressive is that the company also says it is now “free cash flow positive.” From the company blog post on the news, from founder Mark Zuckerberg:
We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.
For those not familiar, “free cash flow” means the amount of cash that a company generates after budgeting costs required to maintain and expand itself.
Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is expecting to see “70% growth in revenue year over year” in 2009 and that Facebook will be “cash flow positive in 2010.″ Facebook board member Marc Andreessen also recently said Facebook would do $500 million in revenues in 2009, up from an estimated $280-$300 million in 2008.
What’s driving Facebook’s revenue growth? A combination of revenue streams: Facebook’s self-service ad business has been very strong lately, it continues to invest heavily in brand advertising efforts, and it also continues to release many experimental expansions to its virtual goods and virtual currency business, Facebook Credits. The company is also still deriving revenue from its advertising deal with Microsoft, signed when Microsoft invested in Facebook in 2007.
Update: So what sort of revenue growth has Facebook actually seen? We asked company executive Elliot Schrage: He couldn’t comment on what exactly was growing revenue, nor could he comment on the company’s overall financial numbers today. We don’t expect the company to say much more this year.
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September 15th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
impressive!
September 15th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
[...] Facebook – Facebook: 300 Million Monthly Active Users, “Free Cash Flow Positive”2009-09-15 – [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
like the other commentor, color me impressed!
September 15th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
full steam ahead.
Warp 7 scotty, second star on the right.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
[...] Inside Facebook, Facebook [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
[...] [來源：Inside Facebook、Facebook Blog] [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
[...] the 300 million MAU(Monthly Active Users) milestone. These users come from all around the globe. As InsideFacebook reports, Facebook added 50 million users in exactly 75 days which represents an average of 670,000 [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
[...] to InsideFacebook, Facebook’s global audience has doubled since the beginning of this year. They actually added 150 [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
And in breaking news, Facebook demands a seat at the UN!
Go Facebook!
September 15th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Lies, lies and statistics. The graph here can’t be accurate. Around July of this year all users in China got blocked from Facebook… that’s a lot of people. There is no significant dip in the graph to indicate that… so perhaps the numbers aren’t reliable either?
September 15th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
[...] rimane ancora misteriosa, al di là della pubblicità sul sito e dell’accordo con Microsoft, Inside Facebook riporta che il social network di Zuckerberg ha iniziato a guadagnare, con qualche mese [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 12:09 am
[...] rimane ancora misteriosa, al di là della pubblicità sul sito e dell’accordo con Microsoft, Inside Facebook riporta che il social network di Zuckerberg ha iniziato a guadagnare, con qualche mese [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 12:32 am
This is amazing.. Seems like soon whole world will switch on to Facebook. Facebook has surely booked the future of Social Networking for itself for years to come.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:58 am
impressive figures, just wow!
September 16th, 2009 at 1:55 am
[...] 300 Millon monthly active users, free cash flow positive [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 2:12 am
Congratulations to Facebook!It seems like only yesterday they had “just”150 million users and that has now doubled in a year! Wow!
September 16th, 2009 at 2:34 am
[...] facebook acaba de atingir 300 milhões de usuários. pouco mais de 70% são americanos, ainda. mas facebook pode vir a ser, e breve, o google das redes sociais abertas. está crescendo em todo o mundo, inclusive –e muito rápido- no brasil e índia, países que ainda são dominados por orkut, mas onde a rede de google começou a dar sinais de cansaço, crescendo bem mais lentamente do que seu desafiante [local]. [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 8:43 am
[...] Photo credit InsideFacebook.com [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 9:03 am
[...] it probably hasn’t made a whole lot of money yet) was opening the gift shop to developers. Inside Facebook notes a few other potentially contributing efforts: What’s driving Facebook’s revenue growth? [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 10:07 am
[...] it probably hasn’t made a whole lot of money yet) was opening the gift shop to developers. Inside Facebook notes a few other potentially contributing efforts: What’s driving Facebook’s revenue growth? [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
[...] it probably hasn’t made a whole lot of money yet) was opening the gift shop to developers. Inside Facebook notes a few other potentially contributing efforts: What’s driving Facebook’s revenue growth? [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 4:28 am
[...] a benchmark of the growth rate consider that Facebook announced they reached 300 million active users September 15th, coming about 75 days after announcing hitting 250 million in July. That’s about [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
[...] Facebook would do $500 million in revenues in 2009, up from an estimated $280-$300 million in 2008. (Source: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/09/15/facebook-reaches-300-million-monthly-active-users/) [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
[...] Tuesday, Facebook said it had become “free cash flow positive” this past quarter — meaning the company is financing its own growth rather than using [...]
September 18th, 2009 at 7:20 am
[...] it probably hasn’t made a whole lot of money yet) was opening the gift shop to developers. Inside Facebook notes a few other potentially contributing [...]
September 20th, 2009 at 9:05 am
[...] in den vergangenen Jahren frisches Kapital erhielt. 2009 hat das allgegenwärtige soziale Netzwerk erstmalig einen positiven Free-Cashflow erreicht – und steigert durch beständiges Experimentieren [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] Facebook’s announcement last week that it reached 300 million monthly active users and was “free cash flow positive,” the company has been making a concerted effort to [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
[...] topping 300 million users. In fact, it added 50 million users in the last 75 days, as reported by Inside FaceBook. Historically, FB was dominated by the 18-25 year olds, eMarketer reports the social network is [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 6:50 am
[...] dominiert das soziale Web. Angesichts von über 300 Millionen aktiven Mitgliedern, täglichen Zuwachsraten im sechsstelligen Bereich sowie stark steigender Verweildauer hänge ich [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
[...] 10 when they announced 250 Million and scratching my head when on September 19,2009 they announced 300 million! They increased 50 Million users in 75 days, which means they added 670,000 users every single [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:31 am
[...] the real-time growth of social media. It is very hard for us to take a statement such as ‘Facebook has 300 million users‘ and do anything useful with it. However, a statement such as ‘Facebook acquired 418 [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
[...] times change. Facebook itself has grown from around 130 million monthly active users to more than 300 million. Social gaming has benefited from this growth, and also likely helped drive [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 6:01 am
[...] the visible success of networks like Facebook, Netlog itself discovered this potential first-hand as it boasts an average of 2 million game plays [...]
November 8th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Interesting
November 12th, 2009 at 5:59 am
[...] is that as the 300 million active user network evolves, so does its [...]
November 20th, 2009 at 7:26 am
[...] many Facebook titles in the past? With each iteration, despite quips about creativity, the platform grew and evolved. Does this mean Twitter will do the same? We’ll be watching. To dig deeper into the virtual [...]
December 1st, 2009 at 8:15 am
[...] a month. FarmVille, now has nearly 69 million users. Facebook’s growth to much more than 300 million monthly active users has certainly contributed to the rise of social gaming, but we continue to wonder how much social [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 10:01 am
[...] full version of the game is for the Nintendo Wii and DS, but with well over 300 million users on Facebook, producing a social rendition seemed like a prudent marketing decision. Yes, [...]