Since 2000, the number of mobile phones in the developing world has increased 1700%

To understand how it is that there can be a company you’ve never heard of with over 2 billion potential users or why Facebook has poured so much effort into building a service that works on the cheapest, simplest mobile phones imaginable, it suffices to look at this graph. Mobile-phone use in the developing world has been skyrocketing; even when it sucks up a goodly chunk of their income, people love to be connected. And companies that can connect with them have a gigantic potential market.