• BussinessWeek, Wednesday, September 16, 2009 1:59 PM

Worldwide, Facebook's community crossed the 300 million member threshold this week, and said it's becoming "cash-flow positive" -- two milestones analysts and bloggers are taking as opportunities to sound off on what is clearly an unprecedented social phenomenon (and likely a good business investment).

"With financial stability pretty much secured it may have a shot at becoming the largest social platform in history, maybe even breaking the mythical 1 billion users mark," writes Softpedia. However, notes The Tech Beat: "This doesn't mean the social network is a profitable operation yet ... Rather, the cash it generates from advertising and other forms of revenue now exceed the cost of servers and other capital expenditures required to keep Facebook running."

More sobering, it says of Facebook's unparalleled content-happy user base: "That's a huge amount of traffic to support, and the site's accumulating stockpile of photos, videos, and other content requires an ever greater number of expensive servers ... This was a serious problem for Facebook as recently as March."

According to the Guardian's Technology blog, "The news prompted speculation that the company could prepare for a stock market launch as early as next year -- a rumour that senior executives have tried to squash in the past."

What's more, writes UK's Telegraph, "Industry analysts believe the milestone could mark a new push by Facebook to dominate the social-networking space, and rival sites, such as the microblogging service Twitter, could be caught up in its wake."

In case you're wondering how Facebook feels about the milestone, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg blogs: "We're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone."

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