Facebook has 2 billion users

Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that it has 2 billion monthly members across the globe. It’s a remarkable milestone for the social network.

And to put that into some kind of global context, the Telegraph noted: “Around 3.7 billion people around the world have access to internet connections, and around 700 million of those are in China, where Facebook is banned, so at least two in every three people who could use Facebook every month do so.” About a billion people still shun Facebook, it seems. I know a few of them.

But from a Tamebay perspective, there are still some questions about Facebook when it comes to ecommerce. Obviously Facebook makes plenty of cash from display advertising and other targeted marketing to users. You may even use it yourself to promote your ecommerce enterprise.

And there is a great deal of trade occurring on Facebook already. You, like me, will likely be a member of a local group (and many of these groups are hyper-local and based on small neighbourhoods and even down to a few streets). But the transactions in these groups are rather more like classifieds and Facebook doesn’t trouser a fee for each sale. And yet the scale of the trade suggests that there is a huge opportunity for Facebook to make more profits.

Indeed, ecommerce is a Holy Grail that somewhat eludes Facebook. It does seem to Tamebay that ecommerce is a massive untapped profit opportunity and, despite some forays, it is one that they have yet to exploit fully. Even taking a tiny cut from these (what must total) many millions of deals would add up to a tidy sum.

And it seems that most of these Facebook groups have a very good reputation for being honest and even policed. Obvious scams don’t last long, it seems. Imagine if a Facebook of 2 billion people could harness both the volume of trade and preserve the trust already experienced. It could be huge.