Communication
In 2009, Facebook's chat program surpassed the one billion messages per day milestone, less than a year after the platform was launched. These figures don't take other communication methods on Facebook -- such as messages, wall posts, comments and pokes -- into account, but do demonstrate the huge and growing importance of the site as a way for contacts to exchange information. Even on a cultural level, that kind of popularity represents a capacity to shape language and communication methods among users.
Facebook as a Community
The sociologist Benedict Anderson defines a community as a group where even if the members do not know each other personally, they recognize each other's existence as parts of the whole and share a set of common practices and experiences. With its one billion users -- a number comparable to the population of Europe and the United States combined -- Facebook is one such community. That could be good or bad, depending largely on the conduct of users and the decisions made by Facebook to shape relationships among members, yet the very existence of such a large community is important to say the least.