Facebook reached a new milestone this week, topping more than a billion people who log onto the social network each month. Its population has doubled since reaching the 500 million milestone in July 2010.
Nearly half of the world’s 2.5 billion Internet users now use Facebook, according to the International Telecommunications Union.
Some general characteristics about the Facebook population:
- The longer people use Facebook, the more “friends” they accumulate. Facebook users who have been signed up for two years have on average about 305 friends. Facebook users who signed up in 2006 average about 600 friends.
- Facebook has 600 million mobile users, meaning that many people are logging onto the social network using their phone rather than a computer.
- The median age of Facebook users is 22.
- About 8.7 percent of its population has duplicate or false accounts.
- The biggest users of Facebook around the world are from Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States. Eighty-one percent of Facebook users live outside of the U.S. and Canada.
Source: “Facebook Tops 1 Billion Users,” Associated Press (Oct. 4, 2012)