Facebook may hit 1 billion mark in August: report

From the Toronto Star:

Facebook Inc., the most popular social-networking service, may reach 1 billion members around August as growth accelerates in developing countries, according to a blog by digital-marketing firm ICrossing.

Facebook, which reached 800 million users last year, will benefit from a surge in new members in countries such as India and Brazil, where a smaller percentage of the population has already signed up, wrote Gregory Lyons, a research and insight manager at ICrossing.

“Looking at the data from 2006 to mid-2008 it looks like Facebook was growing at an exponential rate, however more recent data suggests it’s growing in a linear fashion,” Lyons wrote. “Facebook’s growth has slowed or stopped in many of its early adopting countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. However, developing countries such as India and Brazil have shown strong growth.”