By Cameron M. Bray ’16
The Roundup

Facebook is the sun of the Internet.

Everything gravitates around it. Constantly it expands. Immense in size.

Dying gradually like it?

No.

Many speculate that Facebook is dying. It is not; it is growing.

Facebook currently holds the highest amount of users ever. On Aug. 26. 2008, just three years after its creation, Facebook reached 100 million users, announced Mark Zuckerburg—CEO of Facebook—through his Facebook blog.

Facebook holds 1.1 billion users now, according to NPR.

One of the 10 most visited sites, and a popular social media provider, Twitter, has approximately 554 million users as of May 7, according to eMarketer in a poll.

Facebook currently boasts at least 500 million users over Twitter.

Another new social media provider, Instagram, has accelerated since its founding in October 2010.

Instagram—popular for its photo-streaming and ready made photo filters—now has 130 million users, according to its statistics page, making the difference 1 billion users.

Most recently, Vine, a social media app for short-video sharing has appeared and reached 13 million users as of June 3, according to The New York Times.

Although Vine has quickly become popular, Facebook still topples over Vine with 1 billion.

In terms of users, Facebook picks stronger competitors out of its teeth every morning.

Besides, Facebook is expanding.

Internet.org—a coalition effort led by Facebook to connect more people to the Internet—is coming like an ominous rain cloud to wash away the competition.

Zuckerburg has made it clear over the last few weeks that Internet.org’s goals are to assimilate the remaining, unconnected two-thirds into the Internet.

Although it is clear this is not a humanitarian movement, it is a smart move for Facebook as well as its corporate interests.

Facebook is essentially “widening the net” to connect more people so its sponsors will have more possible consumers.

Still, many speculate that Facebook is withering as other social media platforms grow.

So what changed?

Nothing.

Facebook is not crippled as many people claim.

In a recent poll of students done in May by The Roundup 41 percent of respondents said that they check Facebook daily while 30 percent said that they check Facebook multiple times a day.

Facebook still remains massively popular and mainstream. Facebook advertisements still appear everywhere—in major industries such as movies and television, but also in private businesses, even doctor’s offices.

The only difference between Facebook of the present vs. the past is that other social media platforms have become available. Facebook opened the floodgates, causing a  cavalcade of other sites to appear.

The competition is not yet popular enough to crush Facebook.

Competitors are growing, but they’re simply trying to climb up to Facebook’s mountainous level of popularity.

Facebook is not shrinking and with Internet.org on the way, the sun is not ready to set just yet.