On Monday, Facebook celebrated its 12th anniversary. During a celebration held at the company’s new headquarters, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he aims to have 5 billion users on the social network site by 2030.
“We want to finish connecting everyone, we’re going to do it in partnership with governments and different companies all over the world,” says Zuckerberg.
For reference, the current world population is estimated to be at around the 7 billion mark. Zuckerberg’s target of 5 billion users means that he wants 60% of the entire world’s population to be on Facebook. As of January 2016, Facebook has an active userbase of 1.59 billion.
Having 5 billion users on Facebook may seem like an incredibly lofty goal, but social network company are making attempts to increase their userbase. For example, Facebook has been attempting to bring the internet and Facebook to underserved areas with its Internet.org initiative. However, the initiative has been encountering some setbacks as of late as Facebook’s highly controversial internet service, Facebook Free Basic, was banned in both India and Egypt.
Free Basic is just a small part of Zuckerberg’s attempt to bring Facebook to the masses as Zuckerberg told the New York Times that the company intends to bring internet access to refugee camps. Zuckerberg has also revealed to the Wall Street Journal that the company is currently developing a solar-powered drone that can beam broadband to users below it.
In short, Zuckerberg is taking a proactive approach to increasing Facebook’s userbase. It would be interesting to see if Zuckerberg manages to hit its goal of 5 billion Facebook users with the next 14 years or so.
