Today (February 5, 2009) is the fifth anniversary of Facebook. This past January 19th was the 8th anniversary of Wikipedia and it was only last fall that Google celebrated its 10th anniversary. To put these milestones in perspective, let me share a few numbers with you. If Facebook were a country it would today be the fifth largest country in the world with a population of 150 million. At the end of 2008, Wikipedia—using only free labor—had 75,000 “editors” who had, together, written 10 million entries in 264 different languages. And Google, from its humble origins in a Stanford University dorm room in 1998, now employs 20,000 people; has a market capitalization of $110 billion; performs over 25 billion searches a day; and has transformed everything from the advertising and newspaper industries to health care. In order to become an Exponential Executive and “jump the curve” 5, 8 and 10 years into the future, it will help to keep these impressive numbers in mind because the future has a surprising way of arriving sooner than expected.
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