After a billion, what’s next for Facebook?

Not complacent at a billion users, Facebook is parachuting into markets all over the globe. But overseas growth that once seemed to come so easily is slower now.In just eight years, Facebook signed up more than half the world’s Internet population.Now it’s going after the rest.Facebook wants to reach every single person on the Internet whether they are logging on from a laptop in Santa Monica, an iPhone in Tokyo or a low-tech phone with a tiny screen in Nairobi.It’s parachuting into market after market to take on homegrown social networks by currying favor with the locals and venturing where many people have spotty — if any — access to the Internet.In Japan, it lets users list their blood types, which the Japanese believe — like astrological signs in the Western world — give insight into personality and temperament. In Africa, Facebook markets a stripped-down, text-only version of its service that works on low-tech mobile phones.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-next-billion-20121202,0,6358184.story