London - The social networking website Facebook last month announced that it has one billion users, the equivalent of about one in seven of the world’s population.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, welcomed the “amazing, humbling” milestone.
The social network, which was started by Zuckerberg while he was at university in 2004, reached the one billion figure at around midday on September 14.
This year has seen mixed fortunes for the company following the decision to float it on the stock market. More than $50 billion has dropped off Facebook’s market value.
The company share price has fallen from $38 when stocks were initially offered in May to a September 13 closing price of $21.83.
According to reports the staggering number of users does not include bots or fake users. It includes only real people who are active users – those who log on to the site every month.
Based on the one billion figure if Facebook were a country it would now be the third largest in the world, behind China’s 1.34 billion people and India, which has a population of 1.2 billion.
According to the figures, Facebook has also seen:
l 140.4 billion friend connections;
l 219 billion photos shared (265 billion photos including all uploaded photos);
l 1.18 trillion “likes”;
l 17 billion location check-ins;
l 62.6 million songs played 22 billion times (since September last year).
On his blog announcing the milestone, Zuckerberg wrote: “This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month.
“If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honour of serving you.
“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.
“I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.”
He said Facebook was “by far” the thing he was most proud of.
Zuckerberg’s own Facebook holdings have plummeted more than $9 billion as sceptics question his ability to lead the company he founded eight years ago in a Harvard University dormitory.
Since founding Facebook Zuckerberg has seen it acquire astonishing popularity. With around 2.45 billion content items and 2.7 billion “Likes” shared every day it has become an important tool for advertisers and content creators.
The median age of a Facebook user is 22, one year down from age 23 when the site hit the 500 million mark in July 2010. –
The Independent