Facebook hits 1 billion users

Facebook has reached 1 billion people who are “actively” using the social network every month, the company announced today.

“If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you. Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Facebook’s online newsroom.

The social network, which started in a dorm room in 2004, reached the historic milestone at 12:45 p.m. PT on September 14. This now puts one in seven people in the world on the social network.

Zuckerberg also announced the milestone on NBC’s Today show. The milestone does not include bots or fake users but real people with accounts who log into the site every month, NBC reported.

If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world, behind China with 1.34 billion people and India with 1.2 billion.

According to Facebook, the site has seen:

• 1.13 trillion “likes”
• 140.3 billion friend connections
• 219 billion photos uploaded (265 billion in all if deleted photos are counted)
• 17 billion location check-ins
• 62.6 million songs played 22 billion times since September 2011

The median age of users is 22 years old, Facebook said. When the social network hit 500 million users in July 2010, the median age was 23. People who joined in July 2010 now have an average of 305 friends.

The company also has more than 600 million mobile users — up by 48 million from 552 million in June — a key metric for those in developing nations who may not have stable access to a fixed-line Internet connection.

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CREDIT: CNET/NBC News