Facebook has a billion users in a single day, says Mark Zuckerberg
It’s a record that some of us may have contributed to: for the first time over a billion people used Facebook on a single day. The "milestone" was reached on Monday (24 August), when, according to company founder Mark Zuckerberg, "1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family".
A computer user checking his Facebook account
Facebook has nearly 1.5 billion users who log in at least once a month, but this was the most in a single day. Founded in 2004 by Zuckerberg, the company gained its billionth user in October 2012. In July, Facebook claimed that over half of the world's online users visited the site at least once a month.
Zuckerberg wrote in a post,
"This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it's just the beginning of connecting the whole world."
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook
The question is how can it continue to grow? Surely it will plateau at some point, right? Yes - but we're a long way off that. One billion is just the beginning.
Sure, the US and Europe are almost at peak Facebook. But there are huge gaps in Africa, much of Asia and some of Latin America. That's where Facebook is focused on now. To gain users here it is investing in new ways to get people online.
A typical Facebook account
Soon a billion people using Facebook in one day will be nothing out of the ordinary. We'll look back on today and laugh at how insignificant today's milestone feels. Whether that's a good or bad thing, I'll leave it up to you!
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
