• Fortune, Wednesday, February 18, 2009 12:15 PM

Just how sticky is Facebook? Consider: the average Google News reader spends 13 minutes per month searching for news; the average New York Times reader logs 10 minutes per month on its site; Facebook, meanwhile, retains users for an astounding 169 minutes per month, according to comScore. As the social networking giant's 24-year-old CEO explains, Facebook's "stickiness" factor was all part of his original plan to build an online version of the relationships we have in real life.

Nowadays, Mark Zuckerberg's plan has changed somewhat. Facebook is now 175 million users strong, making it the sixth largest country in the world. His new goal: to turn Facebook into the Web's standardized communication and marketing platform, "as ubiquitous and intuitive as the telephone but far more interactive, multidimensional--and indispensable," says Fortune's Jesse Hempel. Zuckerberg wants your Facebook ID to be your gateway to the digital world. "We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone's name, find the person you're looking for, and communicate with them," the Facebook CEO told a German audience in January, "that's a really valuable system to be building."

Meanwhile, Facebook's valuation is still the subject of great debate. The $15 billion figure lumped on it 2007 after Microsoft bought a $240 million 1.6% stake, has now fallen to $3.7 billion, according to recently exposed court documents. As Hempel explains, "A big part of the challenge in assigning a valuation to Facebook is that its financial results don't come anywhere near to matching its runaway success signing up members." The company pulled in revenues of $280 million last year; sources tell Hempel it didn't even break even.

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