According to Wikipedia Facebook launched February 4th, 2004.
Here is a chart from Yahoo Finance of Facebook's number of users up to 1 Billion users.
-1 million — End of 2004.
-5.5 million — End of 2005.
-12 million — End of 2006.
-20 million — April 2007.
-50 million — October 2007.
-100 million — August 2008.
-250 million — July 2009.
-500 million — July 2010.
-750 million — July 2011.
-1.01 billion — September 2012.
Showing that it took Facebook 1 year to reach a million users, and 8 years to reach 1 billion users.
Now according to https://steemdata.com/ we just passed half a million users on Steemit!
However if you take a look at the Daily Active Users we only have 38,000 active users, but activity has been steadily growing recently!
Keep in mind there was not a lot of competition back in 2004 either.
Also last year when Steemit first launched it was focused on the blogging community, and Reddit had a lot less users than Facebook (Reddit - 200M & Facebook - 2+ Billion).
So with cryptocurrency just now becoming main stream, and all of the websites, tools, and features being built for Steemit and STEEM.. I think Steemit could reach 1 billion users in less than 8 years!
If you have not had a chance to read my recent post about a VR Steemit World check it out!
Thanks for checking this out, and let me know what you think!
Post - Vote - Earn :D
Disclaimer: I am not an Investment Advisor, and this is not investment advice. This is for entertainment purposes only!