Roughly 7 billion people populate the world, and Facebook aims to have 5 billion of them connected to its network by 2030.
Facebook is an immensely popular social network worldwide and it already amasses an impressive user base, but it nonetheless envisions a far more ambitious future.
As of Thursday, Facebook is now 12-years-old and deems the day as "Friends Day" to celebrate the occasion. Facebook has come a long way since it started and it's constantly growing and improving, rapidly gaining more users and increased activity.
During an event at Facebook's new headquarters, celebrating the network's 12th anniversary, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about achievements so far and ambitions for the future.
"We want to finish connecting everyone, we're going to do it in partnership with governments and different companies all over the world," says Zuckerberg, as cited by USA Today. Pointing at a photo of the Aquila drone Facebook developed, the executive further hints at how Facebook plans to hit 5 billion users by 2030. "It's solar-powered, and it'll just fly around a city and beam down Internet access. It's, like, pretty crazy, right?"
In a separate post on its company blog, Facebook further highlights its commitment to connecting as many people as possible.
"When people connect, powerful things happen and lives are changed," says Facebook. "We know that people are more connected today than ever before. Over the past five years, the global Facebook community has more than doubled in size."
As its user base is twice as large from 2011 with 1.5 billion users now, Facebook also highlights that the degrees of separation between users shrunk to 3.57 degrees from the previous 3.74.
While it's impressive how far Facebook has come, the company's future goals are even more ambitious.
Facebook wants to connect the whole world and make Internet accessible everywhere. The company has already been making efforts in this regards, with its Free Basics program, although it hit some bumps on the road amid net neutrality concerns.
Founded back in 2004, Facebook's mission from the very beginning has been to pave the way to a more open and connected world, bringing people together regardless of the distance that separates them.
When reporting its financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2015 a week ago, Facebook said it had a great year and its business is thriving. Reaching 5 billion users by 2030 may sound overly ambitious to some, and it would mark a 3.5-billion increase in users, but Zuckerberg is confident that Facebook can get there. Deploying autonomous drones that offer Internet access would play a great role toward this endeavor, but it will be interesting to see what else Facebook comes up with to boost its user base.
