Facebook is influential.  500+ million users world-wide is no small number.  Of the over 100 million users in the US, it is reported that 70% check Facebook at least once a day.  Those are numbers that cannot be ignored.  But I wonder how much of a reach Facebook really has.

Facebook has a closed-by-default ecosystem….at least culturally (not necessarily technically). Most people only allow access to their profile from friends or possibly friends-of-friends.  As a result, the Facebook zone of influence is probably ~200 “friends” per user. It turns out that is a very small group of people compared to other social networks, such as blogs or Twitter. In Facebook I can only ever reach about 200 people. And because of the way I (and almost everyone I have polled) use Facebook, that number is not likely to grow.  As a result, Facebook is a relatively nice, safe home for me and my friends to show the latest pictures of our kids and maybe post a NYT’s article, but that’s about it.

Compare that to Twitter or blogging. In these more open systems, any of my posts may be shared or retweeted and be seen by hundreds of people.  It is happen to me a number of times already: I Tweet, it gets retweeted and the link I shared was clicked on by hundreds of people all over the world (literally).  That is a system with a powerful reach.

I very much wonder how Facebook can compete - in the long run - with such reach and scale.  I cannot help but think that the Facebook emperor has no clothes. What do you think?