Facebook hits one billion users

NEW YORK- Agence France-Presse

AP Photo

Facebook said today that it now has more than one billion users, in a new milestone for the world's biggest social network.
 
Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement, saying the number is "humbling." "This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month," he said in a statement.
 
"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." Interviewed on the NBC Today show, he called the milestone "unbelievable." "To be able to come into work every day and build things that help a billion people stay connected with the people they care about every month, that's just unbelievable," Zuckerberg said.
 
Facebook said it reached one billion monthly active users on September 14 at 12:45 pm Pacific time. That includes 600 million mobile users.
 
The California company launched a public offering in May, but has seen its share price tumble amid concerns that it may not be able to grow revenues as users migrate to mobile devices.
 
In the NBC interview, Zuckerberg said: "Things go in cycles. We're obviously in a tough cycle now and that doesn't help morale, but at the same time, you know, people here are focused on the things that they're building" He added, "I mean, you get to build things here that touch a billion people, which is just not something that you can say at almost anywhere else, so I think that's really the thing that motivates people." Since Facebook's launch, users have produced over 1.13 trillion "likes," some 140 billion friend connections and have uploaded 219 billion photos.