Facebook has come a long, long way since launching in 2004. The social networking web site now has a confirmed worldwide user base of 750 million users. With all of those users that means that Facebook will also have to handle more and more data. That means that the company will have to also build its own data centers in order to keep up with the increased demand.
GigaOM reports that during Wednesday"s press event at Facebook headquarters, where the company announced the launch of its new video chat feature powered by Skype, Facebook"s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the amount of data that a Facebook user currently shares is double what that user shared just a year ago and that data sharing amount per user is expected to double once again in 2012.
He added, "We’re definitely on this trend now where it makes sense for us given the scale of usage and the information flowing through the network where we’re probably going to be building our own data centers, rather than leasing." Zuckerberg didn"t give any info about their data center building plans during the press event. However its clear that with Facebook users now able to use the service to video chat with each other the need to cope with all that bandwidth will be a big part of the company"s future plans. Facebook"s data center plans could also be a big economic boom for the locations where those data centers will eventually be built.