Some interesting stats, courtesy of VentureBeat about Facebook’s usage.  As some of you may or may not, know I’m from Toronto, Canada, where Facebook’s penetration is unusually high.  Quoth Eric, via Venturebeat:

Particularly noteworthy is its traction in Canada, where it has more than 2 million active users, around 11 percent of the site’s total. A remarkable 20 to 25 percent of Toronto’s population is using Facebook, with more than 500,000 users. Ontario even banned the site in governmental workplaces because it was so distracting. Growth rates are several times higher outside the U.S. than in it.

It pulls the stats from Facebook’s very own blog over here.

Well, on a personal note this is something that is both awesome and peculiar at the same time.  I know for a fact that Facebook is spreading like wildfire in this town.  Everyone and their sister (and mother, and brother) seems to be on Facebook.  You know that something has just hit the mainstream when friends that usually have no interest in technology or web services pull you aside conspiratorially and ask you if you’ve heard of this “Facebook” thing, how awesome it is, and how “everyone seems to be on it these days”.

And I mean *everyone*!  Work, friends, relatives — it seems like no one has escaped it, here in Toronto.  Well, perhaps I happen to only know people in that 25% of the entire city.

I did mention “peculiar” in discussing the Facebook phenomenon only because its part of the social and new media scene, and of course I do read about it and cover it from that point of view (if only peripherally).  But to hear people who have no interest in the topic suddenly talking about it like its the best thing since the Macarena?

That’s the tipping point, baby.

Besides ranting about how remarkable this is, I did have a point to make — and that is how proliferative and important social networks have become in the evolution of internet and internet usage.

It is not some fad, and it is not some passing trend.  I used “Macarena” facetiously, because I really don’t think social networks are going away, like the rightly-maligned “dance” song from the early 90’s.  No, if done right, social networks provide a unified layer of integrated connectivity that doesn’t otherwise exist; and furthermore — and most importantly — once they have people have been locked into a network of familiar faces, some of whom they haven’t seen of or heard from in years, it becomes very, very, very difficult to switch.

Facebook and its ilk are here to stay.  And in Toronto anyway, they’ve gone far beyond early adopters to the mainstream, which is something not many web services can claim.

Mr. Zuckerburg turning down a billion dollars from Yahoo?

Seems like the smartest thing I’ve heard all year long.

[incidentally, if you want to "add" me as a "friend", you're welcome to do so over here]