Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook to announce that 1 billion people use the social networking website every month.
Zuckerberg broke the news with a status update, thanking the Facebook community and making it clear that he was committed to improving the social networking website.
It comes only just over two years after Facebook reached the half billion active users mark, and coincides with their first ever advert, a 90-minute video ‘The Things that Connect Us’.
The milestone will no doubt give Facebook employees something to smile about after months of dismal trading figures and a number of lawsuits after it went public in May.
Having skyrocketed into the Forbes 400 list after Facebook floated onto the stock market at $38 a share, Mark Zuckerberg has had a bumpy ride, dropping $8.1bn in the past few months as share prices plummeted. Many have blamed this drop on Facebook’s inability to capitalise on mobile advertising.
Facebook have since launched a number of initiatives to generate revenue, introducing paid posts that users can pay for to promote their status updates.
This has caused significant dispute within the Facebook community but has evidently done little to affect user figures.
After months of negative press, the growth of the site’s user base to 1 billion, around 1 seventh of the world’s population and a number that exceeds all but two countries on the planet, will provide welcome ammunition in the company’s fight to convince investors of their enormous money-making potential.