News

Facebook reaches one billion users

Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking site Facebook has reached a milestone , with more than one billion people using it every month.

According to Facebook, those billion users to date are responsible for 1.13 trillion ‘likes’, 219 billion photos and 17 billion location check-ins. The site, which launched in 2004, is now looking towards emerging markets to build its user base further.

In another milestone for the company, there are now 600 million users accessing the site via a mobile device - up 48 million from 552 million in June this year.

Although the service is by far the world's biggest social network, there are key areas, such as China and Russia, where local competitors still remain the online networking tool of choice.

Last month, Zuckerberg made his first TV chat show appearance in Moscow, as well as a highly publicised meeting with the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev. It was a public-relations exercise designed to unsettle VKontakte - a network that boasts in excess of 300 million members, compared with Facebook's seven million in the country.

In Africa, Facebook has targeted the use of basic phones - known widely as ‘feature phones’ - which are unable to display the full-featured site, but can use variations of the network.

A project called Facebook for Every Phone, which was launched following the company's acquisition of feature-phone specialists Snaptu, is central to its growth strategy in the region.

Devina Joshi, London