As Facebook celebrates the milestone of having one billion users, social media experts are taking a look at how social networking has evolved.
Consultant Mari Smith said that social media developments have changed the way that people conduct business.
"In essence, we have removed the middle person from a business standpoint. Anybody can put up a Facebook page and put up various web sites and blogs and drive traffic from other social channels," said Smith.
In a Thursday statement, Facebook said it reached the one billion active monthly users threshold in mid-September.
In an interview on the U.S.-based NBC television network's "Today" show, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg described the achievement as "just unbelievable."
He helped launch the company in 2004 while he was a student at Harvard University.
Peter Corbett, the head of the iStrategyLabs digital agency, said social networking is not as exciting now as it was in 2004 because it is so widely used.
"I think it's gotten more boring. In the early days, 2004 to 2008, everything was new. Everything was exciting. Facebook had maybe a million users. Twitter had just launched in 2007. And now that we are in 2012, we are in mass adoption phase. Just thinking about a billion users on Facebook, that's mass, globally mass," he said.
Corbett said in the future, he expects social media tools to be integrated into everyday products such as refrigerators and coolers.