It's not just me: over the last fortnight, FaceBook has past a tipping in Australia.
Originally, FaceBook was a foreign concept to most of us Down Under, mostly because the system started by trying to replicate the experience of sharing physical "face books", which are prominent in the US education system, but not in Australia.
That's all changing, and fast.
Step one was when FaceBook opened its doors to non-students a while back. Membership grew, and I certainly registered an account of my own around that point.
Step two was when FaceBook opened its doors to third-party applications. The buzz boomed — but the intial talk was driven by ubergeeks like Marc Andreessen rather than ordinary folks and their PCs.
But no longer.
I talked to a few people today and discovered that everyone is experiencing a massive surge in friend requests — from colleagues, journalists and social contacts. I found that people are discussing the boom when they meet up with their friends. I even discovered (from some of the ex-pats in our office) that the UK's Prince Harry and Prince William have FaceBook pages.
Then I turned to Google Blog search and found the ABC's Arts News program reporting that FaceBook was soaring Down Under, Laurel Papworth raving about FaceBook opening up to third parties, Lee Hopkins describing FaceBook as the darling of the web 2.0 world, Cathy Edwards Twittering about an impending Canada-style FaceBook explosion in Australia, and VentureBeat claiming that Australia is FaceBook's third biggest growth market after Canada and Norway. Wow!
So how about it Sandra? Let's see the stats!
I've also heard some talk about this being a huge threat to other popular social networks. Don't believe it for a second. Networks are becoming more open by the day, the best ones offer clear and quite distinct value propositions (lifestyle and entertainment for MySpace; business development for LinkedIn; etc), and we're all becoming better at managing multiple online tools and identities.
But one things is for sure: FaceBook is on a roll this month in Australia.