This is no surprise to anyone even remotely following the company, but Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg just made things official on the company’s blog: the social network is now 500 million members strong.
According to Zuckerberg, the milestone was hit this morning, which I suspect may be disregarding the exact time just a little.
Either way, Facebook has put together a collection of stories (that page / app is down for me, but is likely being slammed right now) that users have shared with the company, detailing the impact the social network has had on their lives.
In addition, Facebook has put together a photo album with messages of thanks.
Zuckerberg will be making an appearance tonight on ABC’s “World News” in an interview with anchor Diane Sawyer to talk more about the impressive milestone. What, you don’t think going from a couple to half a billion active users in six years counts as an impressive feat?
To put it in perspective: it was only five and a half months ago when Facebook celebrated its sixth birthday and hit 400 million active users – about as long as it took them to go from 300 million to 400 million. Does that mean Facebook will grow to 600 million members by the end of the year, or could it possibly be peaking?
Zuckerberg is actually quite confident they’ll hit 1 billion active users at some point – just last month, at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, he argued that it is “almost a guarantee that it will happen”.
But wait, don’t you all hate Facebook so much you were quitting soon?
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1.1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
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