Life on the Edge: Learning from Facebook

The social network provides important lessons for executives—and a key forum for innovation and experimentation

BusinessWeek, April 2, 2008 — For most business executives, Facebook remains a remote, somewhat mysterious, online frontier. Many executives harbor strong doubts that Facebook is at all relevant to "real business." After all, isn't it just a bunch of college kids sharing photos of drinking exploits and trying to hook up with each other?

Let's start with the stats. Facebook now brings together 66 million online users. While many of these users are students and recent graduates, users 35 years old and older account for more than half of Facebook's daily visitors and are the network's most rapidly growing demographic. Currently the average Facebook visitor spends about 2.5 hours per month on the site, which was founded in February, 2004, and was valued at $15 billion three years later when Microsoft purchased a 1.6% share of the company.