What’s with this attitude about Facebook?

On one day in late summer, Facebook reported that it hit a significant milestone – one billion people had used the social networking site on August 24.  Translation: one in every seven people on the planet logged in to Facebook that day.  

Perhaps, I surmised, the spike was due to the Pope getting a ton of happy birthday posts (nope, he was actually born in December) or that some Kardashian (current or former) had posted a new selfie (wait, doesn’t that happen every day?).

More likely, Facebook has reached such global saturation – almost 1.5 billion users – that the milestone was entirely inevitable.  

And yet, despite this massive market penetration on a worldwide scale, I still have many friends and business contacts that scoff at Facebook as if it were some kind of teenage mania, an online Macarena of sorts that will soon fade into obscurity. Mention Facebook, and they’ll roll their eyes and shake their heads as an almost sympathetic gesture. To them, Facebook is something we need to grow out of.  It might just as well be Candy Crush or Clash of Clans or some other time-sapping obsession best left for those whose lives are somehow not as serious as theirs. 

But one BILLION users in a single day?  Does Facebook really deserve the derision it gets from so many people, including those in the professional world?

I suspect that other technologies through the ages had a similar reception.  One point of reference that comes to mind is Robert Crawley, Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham who welcomes the arrival of the telephone to the manor as enthusiastically as he does his mother-in-law.  While the younger family members embrace this symbol of modernism as a transformative convenience, Lord Grantham sees it as a nuisance that, if he looks away long enough, might very well go away.

Make no mistake, Facebook is here to stay, and not simply by virtue of its capacity to enable friends to share photos, videos and opinions among one another. The platform is transforming marketing, giving us unprecedented new tools for precisely targeting new customers.  Through Facebook (and other platforms like LinkedIn), we are able to engage complete strangers in the “buyers’ journey,” taking them from someone who never heard of our product or service, to someone intrigued enough to learn more, to, ultimately, a customer.  We can build brands on Facebook, showcase our expertise and build a community of friends – all with an unprecedented cost efficiency.

I for one am at a loss for this undercurrent of disdain for Facebook.  And for the record, my mother-in-law is welcome at our house any time.