In Search Of Lost Time

This week's O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit yielded the usual detritus about technology reinventing the laws that govern time and space, but Facebook's revelation that people spend 8 billion minutes a day on its service really cut through the clutter for me.The details are equally stunning: 300 million+ active users share 2 billion "pieces of content" every week, requiring Facebook's home page news feeds to process 50 million operations per second. Such levels of activity all but defy comprehension. It's no wonder that the company's founder won The Economist's "Innovation Award" this year (not to mention has a net worth greater than that of most of the users of his service put together). I understand why marketers are desperately trying to find things to do with Facebook, since 300 million+ users means reaching the 600 million+ pairs of eyeballs (generally) of potential shoppers.