2007 in Review No. 7: Facebook pokes the world

Part of our series of festive posts looking back at the key happenings in 2007…

Admit it: many of the most adamant Facebook refuseniks had decided to join the fastest growing social network after all by the end of the year. Facebook is one of those sites that, once it gathered momentum, was near unstoppable in terms of signing up users. Once most of your friends were on it, you had to join.

2007 was a great year for Facebook in other ways too, such as the launch of its Applications platform, which has already spawned some innovative apps, with more to come in 2008. Music, games and Web 2.0 companies are only scratching the surface of what’s possible now.

However, with mushrooming userbases also comes responsibility – something Facebook didn’t show with the launch of its intrusive Beacon advertising technology recently. It swiftly apologised, but any more misjudgements of its users on that scale, and it’ll risk ebbing away as fast as it grew.

Check our other 2007 In Review posts by clicking here