Facebook to Announce 500-Millionth User with "Facebook Stories"
Boomtown confirmed this week that Facebook will announce its 500-millionth user next week and will mark the occasion with a new consumer marketing initiative called “Facebook Stories.”
The program will center on a variety of life stories from users about the impact of the social networking site on their lives–and asked Facebook about it.
In an interview with Boomtown, Randi Zuckerberg said the effort is a way to announce the milestone in a different way.
“As we anticipated our 500-million milestone, and we wanted to find a different way to announce and celebrate it.” Zuckerberg told Boomtown and who the creator of the site. “In the past, it’s been all about the numbers and milestones and we realized we had never taken the opportunity to celebrate users.”
Getting to this point is big time for Facebook. The celebration will show off some of the stories that the company has collected, but never showcased, according to Boomtown.
In their story about the celebration and marketing initiative, Boomtown wrote:
The stories will have two views–organized by by geographical location and by theme, such as “finding love,” “coping with grief” and “natural disasters.”Facebook has seeded the selection with about 200 text stories it has, asking users again for permission to feature them.
But the point is to open the page up to all users to submit their tale in 420 characters, the same number as a status update on Facebook. The story can also be linked to the user’s profile.
Users can also “Like” stories and the most popular will be featured. The site will also be optimized for the other devices, such as the Apple (AAPL) iPad and Amazon (AMZN) Kindle.
The site is expected to launch next week. You can tell your story now by going to this page over on Facebook.
What do you think of the initiative? What's your Facebook story?
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