Facebook: The Undeniable Social Network King

Facebook may have had a very difficult year after the IPO debacle that led to an unbelievable plummet in its share prices, but the good news is that the social networking company is starting to recover with its shares now trading above $30 for the first time since its IPO. This is still 20% less than the share prices pre-IPO, but at least it is way higher than their all-time low back in September of last year.

While all the stock market woes may have given Facebook shareholders a lot of headaches these past months, there’s no denying that it is still the biggest social networking company in the world both in terms of worth and user base.

That is not to say that Facebook can afford to rest on its laurels with challenges still facing them left and right like the Instagram policy change, which they have dropped after getting properly and thoroughly bashed online. Facebook has also been taking steps to up their game in terms of security by rolling out HTTPS for all of its pages late last year. Then there’s the question of keeping their talented employees from leaving, with the likes of top Facebook designer Aaron Sitting leaving (again) for yet unknown opportunities. For those who do not know Aaron Sittig, he’s actually the one who created the “Like” button and “photo tagging”, two simple functionalities we Facebook users probably can’t do without.

Still all the challenges that Facebook has to deal with and overcome are nothing compared to its grip on the social media market and its staggering 1 billion monthly active users (as of October 2012) worldwide. Facebook’s supremacy in the social networking world also extends to the mobile market with 604 million monthly active Facebook Mobile product users (as of September 2012).

With such a large audience it is undeniable the Facebook is indeed still the social network king. After all, you won’t find any other social network site that comes close in terms of number of users. Twitter may have over a billion account IDs, but its active registered users only reach 500+ million. Other social network sites lag even further behind.

Facebook users’ loyalty and ever increase number, along with its recovering finances ensures that the social network company has nothing to fear in terms of being the top dog in the social network industry for years to come.

[Images via huffingtonpost & thetechblock]