It’s a big day for Facebook. Just eight years after its debut in a dorm room, the social network has changed the world. For brands, it has become a way to reach and reach out to customers with engaging content, conversations and now even customer service. Here are five fascinating facts about Facebook to celebrate it’s big day going public:
1. A Wide Net. By the end of 2012, it’s projected that one billion people will have Facebook accounts. That’s one in every seven humans on the planet. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China (population: 1.34 billion) and India (population: 1.17 billion).
2. That’s Not Just a Regular Hoodie. Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie is printed an elaborate insignia with Facebook’s mission statement: “Making the World More Open and Connected.”
3. Say Hello to My Little Friend. Prior to 2007, Facebook’s home page featured a man’s face partially obscured behind a cloud of binary code. Who was it? David Kirkpatrick revealed in his book The Facebook Effect that the image is a manipulated photo of Al Pacino created by a classmate of Mark Zuckerberg.
4. Facebook’s Top 5. Currently, the most popular pages on Facebook are Facebook’s own page with approximately 66 million fans, followed by a Texas HoldEm Poker page with 60 million fans, YouTube’s page with 57 million fans, an Eminem fan page with 56 million fans, and a Rihanna page with 55 million fans.
5. Why Facebook is Blue. Facebook’s trademark blue is a color that’s easy on the eyes of its founder. Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind. “Blue is the richest color for me. I can see all of blue,” he told the New Yorker’s Jose Antonio Vargas.
More interesting Facebook trivia: When people view Facebook’s Timeline pages, where do they focus? A recent webcam eye-tracking study by EyeTrackShop shows brand page focus hotspots highlighted in the image below. Want increased attention? Studies have shown that a photo of a single human face with a genuine smile generates 20% more visual appeal.
A little Facebook Trivia of our own: In 2010, Parature developed Parature for Facebook™, the industry’s very first customer service application for directly engaging with customers, prospects and fans on Facebook.