Hitwise Sums Up Facebook At Five

Today marks Independence Day in Sri Lanka, Across the Universe Day for NASA buffs, and, as you've surely heard by now, Facebook's fifth birthday.  To celebrate, Hitwise took a look at the social network's state of being and some of its more recent achievements.

First things first: Facebook is big.  Heather Dougherty writes, "Overall, Facebook was the #5 ranked website by total market share of visits in January 2009.  One year ago, visits to Facebook represented 15% of the total social networking category while MySpace captured 73%.  In January 2009, Facebook's share doubled to reach 31%, while MySpace's total share of the category eroded to 57%."

Facebook's come a long way in 1,825 days.  With its existence framed that way, it's hard to imagine where the site will be in another five years.