Psy's "Gangnam Style" video has been viewed 2.6 billion times (it broke the YouTube counter). Mind that this is YouTube rather than Facebook, though much of the video's sharing was through Facebook. So the capacity to reach some billions of people is possible and has been attained.
I'm noting this as an example of a widely-shared piece of content that I'm aware of. I'm also having trouble turning up widely-shared content Facebook-specific stats.
"An Anatomy of Large Facebook Share Cascades" mentions a case of 600,000 re-shares. That's a substantial fraction of total Facebook users.
What I've looked at is the distribution of posts on specific topics of intellectual interest, as compared with nonintellectual discussions. Total community size matters, though it's not a total determinant. Smaller communities with good discussion characteristics (say, Reddit) come close to matching Facebook on actual discussion, and very small communities such as Metafilter actually have very high ratios of relevant discussion, though these may omit specific domain or topic experts.
On a similar basis, if you want to find any one particular subset of people, you're in general going to find that in a larger rather than smaller network. Of course, if you know which specific group you're trying to target, then there may be other networks of specific interest. In the case you make, of seeking out family, friends, or shared interests, in general, Facebook is that network, and the attempts of other networks to challenge Facebook on the basis of social graph has typically failed. Challengers who have succeeded have generally done so on other bases -- intrest graph (Reddit), specific subset networks (e.g., Slack), or 1:1 communications (Snapchat).
Of material I've posted for which I have available stats, I'm aware of reach on the order of thousands to tens of thousands of unique readers, and no, not on Facebook (I don't make use of the platform). That's pretty good, though I find that where there are very specific people I'm interested in corresponding with, reaching out to them specifically (usually through email) is the most effective means.
> Psy's "Gangnam Style" video has been viewed 2.6 billion times
So? How it's relevant to the discussion at hand? Of course youtube is a great platfrom for pop-artists. But we aren't pop artists. And there were platforms before youtube and undoubtedly would be ones after.
> In the case you make, of seeking out family, friends, or shared interests, in general, Facebook is that network,
I have varied interests, and virtually none of them I found on Facebook or they depend on Facebook in any significant capacity. True, I can find some materials regarding to my interests on facebook, and some people sharing these interests are present on facebook, but none of it makes facebook irreplaceable. In fact, if facebook disappeared this second, it would be no more than minor inconvenience for any of the interests I share. Beyond certain point, unless your interests are either extremely rare or extremely broad, size of the network matters very little. If another billion people joins Facebook, it won't change my life even a little.
It may make next Psy earn more millions or billions, and make ad makers' profits soar to the skies, but to my life - and, I am sure, life of about 90% of Earth population - nothing would happen.
> "An Anatomy of Large Facebook Share Cascades" mentions a case of 600,000 re-shares
So what? Yes, cat pictures get shared a lot. Picture of Obama winning election probably even more. Information content of either is very close to zero, and neither is necessary for anything - Facebook is a crappy platform for being informed about political matters (even leaving the question of confirmed bias aside) and cat pictures are not something one can't live without anyway.
> Smaller communities with good discussion characteristics (say, Reddit) come close to matching Facebook on actual discussion
Facebook is one of the most crappiest platform in existence for actual discussion. Only twitter is worse, and that is because it's impossible to hold a conversation there at all, by design. Reddit is way better but that's a low bar to clear - most of discussion on Reddit, by volume, is garbage, with small pockets of excellent content if you can find them.
The comparison of YouTube and Facebook is one of noting the reach of specific platforms. You seem to be pointedly failing to recognise the fact that 1) a video platform without YouTube's reach would not have served Psy, and that 2) Facebook was a key component in the propogation of the video itself. Both relate directly to the question of platform size.
I wasn't aware of counter/hoax status, though I've bumped into int limits myself, so found it plausible. Thanks for the information.
Your personal experience on any social network is almost never a solid basis for extrapolating to others' experience. That's something my own experience in quantifying the size of active user communities and range of conversation across networks has established quite clearly. It's an argument I've long since tired of.
On G+, the median number of followers for a non-publicly active profile -- 94% of all profiles -- is two. For profiles with any public posting activity at all, it's slightly higher: five.
Your original contention was that "There are literally thousands of popular forums that are not facebook." My response was that there are at best very few platforms which can match Facebook for general discussion. Something I've studied directly, in large part because I'm interested in finding good general discussion.
I'm also not a Facebook user, because I find the morals and practices of the company and its founder dispicable. A frequent affliction of mine, as a brief perusal of my G+ profile may indicate.
My larger points are these:
* On any given topic, for any given discussion, odds are far higher of finding a relevant discussion group on Facebook than on virtually any other platform, with the possible exception of Reddit.
* For any mass media online message, such as, say, the Prime Minister of Norway might care to engage in, Facebook is, hands down, it. Nothing else, not Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Usenet, not nothin', will compare. (You've been, I'll note, peculiarly silent on offering specific alternatives.) I'm not saying that this is my specific use case. I am saying that if it were, FB is reigning king.
Your observations on the specifics of conversation on Facebook as opposed to other platforms matches my own direct quantified research to a large extent. You might care to look again (or for the first time?) at the link I posted above. "Tracking the Conversation: FP Global 100 Thinkers on the Web":
Yes, Reddit beats out FB, though Metafilter knocks out both on the basis of relevant discussion, albeit at vastly smaller scale. Blogs in particular score exceptionally highly for content, but have a discoverability problem -- again, FB can address that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style
I'm noting this as an example of a widely-shared piece of content that I'm aware of. I'm also having trouble turning up widely-shared content Facebook-specific stats.
"An Anatomy of Large Facebook Share Cascades" mentions a case of 600,000 re-shares. That's a substantial fraction of total Facebook users.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-ana...
A listing of ten-most-popular Facebook posts of 2014 gives values into the 3 million range.
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/12/22/facebook-most-shared...
What I've looked at is the distribution of posts on specific topics of intellectual interest, as compared with nonintellectual discussions. Total community size matters, though it's not a total determinant. Smaller communities with good discussion characteristics (say, Reddit) come close to matching Facebook on actual discussion, and very small communities such as Metafilter actually have very high ratios of relevant discussion, though these may omit specific domain or topic experts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...
On a similar basis, if you want to find any one particular subset of people, you're in general going to find that in a larger rather than smaller network. Of course, if you know which specific group you're trying to target, then there may be other networks of specific interest. In the case you make, of seeking out family, friends, or shared interests, in general, Facebook is that network, and the attempts of other networks to challenge Facebook on the basis of social graph has typically failed. Challengers who have succeeded have generally done so on other bases -- intrest graph (Reddit), specific subset networks (e.g., Slack), or 1:1 communications (Snapchat).
Of material I've posted for which I have available stats, I'm aware of reach on the order of thousands to tens of thousands of unique readers, and no, not on Facebook (I don't make use of the platform). That's pretty good, though I find that where there are very specific people I'm interested in corresponding with, reaching out to them specifically (usually through email) is the most effective means.