Pingdom is sharing the following infographic, putting “Facebook’s user base into context”. Somewhere in the middle is the population of the United States. Sprinkled throughout, in blue, are Facebook user counts from throughout the years. Near the bottom counts as of January.

It’s worth noting, as it does as the bottom of the infographic, that the information obtained for its compilation comes from a few different places, including Wikipedia. It’s accuracy can’t be guaranteed, but it’s an interesting look nevertheless.

Now consider how Facebook is growing, changing, and evolving into much more than what it started as. Think movie rental destination, payments service, online identification, deals provider, email service, and much more – and they’re far from done.

Facebook has also been putting more emphasis on journalism. This past week, they launched a new Journalists on Facebook Page and a set of workshops aimed at getting journalists to get the most out of Faebook that they can.

Then there was the big announcement of the Open Compute Project – the open sourcing of server and data center plans aimed at making these things more energy efficient, while reducing costs throughout the industry.

Suffice it to say, it doesn’t look like Facebook will be going the way of MySpace anytime soon.