What Is Facebook, Really?

by Jeffrey F. Rayport

First, Facebook is not really a website anymore. Rather, it's a vast, branded utility. It's like another World Wide Web, but with a profit motive. It's a kind of Wikipedia, but built on a corporate, not a cooperative, model. As a communications technology, it has radically changed the ways we connect with one another. It accounts for nearly 10 percent of total time spent online by U.S. Web users (just ahead of Google). It has more than 600 million users. It's like a new global telephone network. For many online users, Facebook is to our era as revolutionary as the telephone was a century earlier.

Second, Facebook is preternaturally addictive. We humans are junkies for updates and information — gossip, news, hearsay, chat. Curiosity about what's going on now is a natural human attribute. That might explain why 48 percent of Americans with Facebook accounts check for "updates" when they wake up; and why 28 percent do so from their smart phones before getting out of bed. Facebook has woven itself into the warp and woof of all of our lives, not only teenage lives. The more it satiates our curiosity, the more curiosity we have to satiate.

Third, Facebook is magnetic as a function of its social engagement. People are drawn to it, because people are drawn to people. How much pull does Facebook exert? Google's own data tell us: in the last 24 months, Google's top search term was "Facebook." One in every 13 people on earth uses Facebook. With "Friend Finder" — a sometimes controversial feature that automatically suggests people you might want to "friend" — Facebook operates a connection engine of unprecedented scale and scope. It delivers on E.M. Forster's famous dictum: "Only connect."

In short, Facebook is not, in any sense, an online publisher. It does something related to, but distinct from, what such publishers do. The fact that Facebook is growing faster than Google did in its early days: the company's usage data tell a story that transcends even those stunning facts. Connection is a human imperative. As Facebook expands inexorably, perhaps we should focus less on the asset and more on the impact. By extending its seemingly endless tendrils online, Facebook is surely changing business; it's also changing us in ways that are arguably out of anyone's control — including that of the gifted entrepreneurs who actually run the "site" itself.