Popular social networking site, Facebook is growing at a rapid pace and crossed half a billion active users mark. The site has grown to a phenomenon and one out of 14 people on earth is on Facebook and continues to attract greater number of users.

Even as new users from around the world sigh up on the site every day its future success will depend on how it manages its costs and what initiatives will bring in revenues since the service is free to the users. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has affirsed again the the site will never charge its users for the service.

The site for now says that it generates enough ad revenues to cover all its costs. Some experts now say that the company which still remains a private company might now consider an initial public stock offering.  

The users of Facebook share information like photos, music updates and this could a great source for advertisers. Facebook tries to get its users to share more information without risking them of giving out to much information to third parties.

Privacy groups and authorities around the world protested few months ago when Facebook bought changes to its privacy settings. Some now suggest a regulatory framework for the sites to operate.

Facebook has defended its business strategy by saying that it does not go about selling user information to the advertisers. It only makes ads available on the pages of users that are based on their interests.

"There's a big misperception that we're making these changes for advertising," said Zuckerberg.

Despite the controversy over online privacy of the users and how much information can be shares safely, Facebook continues to grow with great speeds. . If the site continues to grow at its current pace it would easily touch the 1 billion users mark in 2011.