Social networking site Facebook, started six years ago by a 20 year old student in his Harvard dorm, announced it now has 500 million users worldwide. This number means that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world.
Facebook crossed the 500 million milestone yesterday. It had over 400 million active users by February this year. About 70 per cent of Facebook users are outside the United States. It has 12 million users in India. An average Facebook user has 130 friends and people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site.
There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
Facebook content can be translated into more than 70 languages.
That’s been one of Facebook’s biggest growth obstacles overseas: the fact that while it was spreading in the U.S., other social networks were growing fast in other countries. None of them has gotten anywhere close to Facebook’s global power, but subtle cultural discrepancies and loyal user bases have meant that it hasn’t been easy for Facebook to convince its user bases to make the switch. In many countries overseas, Facebook didn’t start to catch on until it was available in the native language, and Facebook’s translations rolled out relatively slowly. These started about two and a half years ago with a handful of European languages.
Zukerberg said in celebration of the milestone, Facebook has launched a new application called ‘Facebook Stories’.
"We have put together a collection of stories you’ve shared with us about the impact Facebook and your friends have had on your lives," he said.
