Are you on Facebook?

According to latest Facebook figures over 500 million people are. That’s 1 in 13 of the world’s population! (source: BBC Website).

Look at the graph below; sure it’s a steady rise in users.

But wait look at the time scale along the bottom, it’s not linear. Look at the first three bars, growth of around 20 million users over three years. Now look at the last two bars a growth of some 100 million users over six months.

This growth in Social Networking re-enforces the assertion made in another article I read recently “Why is traditional advertising dead?”

In this article Jim Boulton, Deputy MD of Story Worldwide suggests that users are becoming immune to blatant in their face adverts that just push the product in their face. To succeed now the advert needs to be more engaging. One approach is to tell a story. Look at the series of BT Broadband ads on TV; will Jane and Adam ever get married? Another, that the Internet lends its self to perfectly, is to provide interaction by letting your users take part, by running polls, asking for directions etc.

Better still do both. Blogging allows you to tell stories about your business, perhaps share success stories or give examples of how your business has helped customers. These examples tell stories, if you allow readers to leave comments it also allows interaction by providing the opportunity for you, and others, to take part in a two way conversation.

This is the sort of social interaction that Facebook’s growth proves people want today.