A million active users isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion active users... and Facebook has just crossed that milestone as revealed in a short post by the company's CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. To put that into perspective, the world's population is thought to be over seven billion as of 2012, which means roughly 14 percent of all humans are accessing the social network each month.
Along with the announcement, Facebook also released a fact sheet with some interesting metrics for the occasion. All in all they've seen over 1.13 trillion likes since launching in 2009, 140.3 billion friend connections, 219 billion photo uploads, 17 billion location tagged posts, and 62.6 million songs played 22 billion times. The median new user age is "about 22," down from 23 two years ago, and 600 million users are accessing Facebook via mobile.
Despite its monumental growth Facebook has had its share of troubles too, from a handful of lawsuits settled out of court to the never-ending concerns over user privacy. Most recently, the company has dealt with the negative press of its lackluster initial public offering and the rapid share price decline that came as a result.
Monetization and mobile are still somewhat of a question mark for Facebook's future, but with one billion active users and still growing the company is certainly in a privileged position and that's not likely to change soon.
Here's the announcement posted by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg:
"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 honor 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."