Plagued with bad news in the spring and summer, Facebook has a number to be proud of—and what a number. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced through the site that there are now more than 1 billion people using Facebook actively each month. Facebook reached that milestone Sept. 14 at 12:45 p.m. PT, according to an information sheet Zuckerberg posted online.
Along with the user data, Facebook—dogged in recent months by a disastrous initial public offering, falling stock prices, a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and allegations that the site is stuffed with fake accounts—let loose with a barrage of key metrics illustrating the enormity of the company’s reach.
The median age of Facebook users is 22, with 600 million of its users logging in through mobile devices. Zuckerberg has recently admitted that the future of the company will be directly tied into its mobile audience and is working on improving the mobile user experience.
Since the site launched, there have been 219 billion photos uploaded (excluding currently deleted photos), and 17 billion location-tagged posts, including check-ins, since the feature was launched in August 2010.
Since the launch of music listening applications in September 2011, 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times, the approximate equivalent of 210,000 years of music. More than 1.13 trillion “likes” have been clicked since the feature was launched in February 2009. The top five countries where people connected from at the time Facebook passed the 1 billion-user mark include Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States.
Interestingly, the median age of users has decreased over time. While the median age of users joining Facebook the week the company hit 25 million users in January 2006 was 19, the median age jumped up to 26 by October 2007, when the number of users passed 50 million. The median age of its users began to descend again to 23 by the time Facebook passed 500 million users in July 2010.
Users who signed up around January 2006 now have an average of 598 friends, the company reported, while those who signed up in the fall of 2007 currently have an average of 321 friends. Users who signed up around the time Facebook hit 100 million users, in August 2008, now have an average of 334 friends, and users who signed up in July 2010 now have an average of 305 friends.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Facebook’s newsroom. “I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world, too.”