Facebook affinity isn’t waning.  Keith Hampton’s Pew Internet report team highlights and indicates its continued growth and a discovered dispersion of what they have referred to as  ”power-users”–those whose level of activity is higher than the average user’s in a given month. 20-30% of the Facebook users fall in this category, but their profile changes depending on whether or not we’re talking about photo-tagging, status-updating, sending private messages, or “liking” social media materials.  The reach of Facebook is continually astounding.

A few interesting remarks and findings from the recent Pew Study on Facebook, Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give, follows:

Facebook users can reach an average of more than 150,000 Facebook users through their Facebook friends; the median user can reach about 31,000 others

At two degrees of separation (friends-of-friends), Facebook users in our sample can on average reach 156,569 other Facebook users. However, the relatively small number of users with very large friends lists, who also tended to have lists that are less interconnected, overstates the reach of the typical Facebook user. In our sample, the maximum reach was 7,821,772 other Facebook users. The median user (the middle user from our sample) can reach 31,170 people through their friends-of-friends.

There is little evidence of Facebook fatigue

We found no evidence among our sample that length of time using Facebook is associated with a decline in Facebook activity. On the contrary, the more time that has passed since a user started using Facebook, the more frequently he/she makes status updates, uses the “like” button, comments on friends’ content, and tags friends in photos. Similarly, the more Facebook friends someone has, the more frequently they contribute all forms of Facebook content and the more friend requests they tend to send and accept.

Power Users

Only 5% of Facebook users were power users on all of these activities, 9% on three, and 11% on two. Because of these power users, and their tendency to specialize on specific Facebook activities, there is a consistent pattern in our sample where Facebook users across activities tend to receive more from friends than they give to others.

General Activity

And the new findings show that over a one-month period:

• 40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request
• Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends’ content an average of 14 times, but had their content “liked” an average of 20 times
• Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12
• 12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

This study comes on the heels of its announcement regarding filed for a $5 billion initial public offering of stock that could eventually value the company at 100 billion.

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