Facebook has this week announced it has crossed the one billion user mark – doubling the 500 million the social networking site reached in July 2010.
Back in August 2008 there were 100 million users.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the milestone on his blog.
“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” he said.
In Australia, there are 11.5 million users – just under half the population.
Of that figure, 75 per cent access Facebook daily and 25 per cent say the site of the first thing they look at every day.
Since Facebook launched there have been:
* Over 1.13 trillion likes since launch in February 2009
* 140.3 billion friend connections
* 219 billion photos uploaded
Of the one billion Facebook users, 81 per cent live outside the US and Canada and 600 million access the social network on their mobile devices.
The median age for a Facebook user is getting younger. Now it is 22 years of age – down from 23 in 2010 and 26 in 2008 and 2007.
Facebook’s one-billion user milestone comes after a cleanout in August of accounts which were deemed fake or duplicates which was though to be as many as 80 million accounts.
Recently Facebook has come under fire following a disastrous share float and privacy concerns.
After the long-awaited and hyped IPO, Facebook was listed at $38 a share and given a company valuation of $100 billion.
But Facebook has since struggled to maintain value on the share market with stocks now around the $21 mark.
Privacy issues have been nothing new to Facebook but the most recent complaint comes from users who claim some of their private messages are being displayed on their timeline.
Facebook’s investigations show these messages were actually wall posts that were always public and always visible.
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