Perspective on Facebook's 150 Million Mark

Kevin Maney retorts: Enough with the 'oohs' and 'aahs' about Facebook reaching 150 million users in five years. In the grand scheme of things, it's really not that impressive.

In its March 2 issue, Fortune has a chart showing five technology products and how quickly they reached 150 million users. It's meant to portray Facebook as a juggernaut. Facebook got there in five years; the iPod in seven; the cell phone in 14 years; television in 38; and the telephone in 89 years. But that thinking is terribly flawed.

For starters, Facebook is the only product of the bunch that is FREE! That kind of makes a load of difference. TVs, telephones, cell phones, and even iPods were quite expensive when they first arrived. If you want to compare Facebook to a contemporary free product, how about Skype? The internet phone service was introduced in 2003, a year before Facebook. At the end of 2008 - after five years - Skype had about 400 million registered users - more than double the number of users Facebook has after five years.

Other factors make Facebook's achievement seem a little less thrilling. Television, telephones, and cell phones all required massive new infrastructure, so building out to serve 150 million customers was an astounding feat, creating hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth and value for society and creating thousands of jobs across the country. Facebook? Well, it's mostly created wealth for Mark Zuckerberg and a handful of his investors. Facebook and its entire ecosystem of widget makers have created - what? - maybe a couple thousand jobs, if that?

How about population? According to the Fortune chart, TV got to 150 million units sold in 1966, when the U.S. population was 197 million. Facebook got to 150 million users in 2009, when the U.S. population is north of 300 million.

Anyway, this is not to say Facebook isn't a remarkable success story. But let's have a little perspective. In the history of great technologies, Facebook is still in the minor leagues.