1 out of 7 people in the world (aka 1 billion people) use Facebook

Ashraf October 4, 2012 5

The human population of Earth is estimated at just under 7 billion. (to be exact, the World Bank estimated our population at 6,973,738,433 in 2011.) 1 billion of these 7 billion humanoids are “actively” using Facebook. Wow.

In an interview with TODAY, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, dropped the bombshell:

I mean, it’s just — an amazing honor. 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.

Now I know what you all must be thinking — the 1 billion number does not mean 1 billion people are regularly using Facebook, and Facebook has many fake accounts so the number is bloated. Too bad you all are wrong. The 1 billion number is of active Facebook users, people who use Facebook at least once a month. And that number does not include fake Facebook accounts, which are estimated to make up 8.7% of total Facebook users. So it really is 1 billion people.

Wow.

To put it into perspective, if Facebook was a country then it would be the third largest country in the world in terms of population, second only to China and India.

Wow.

Did I say wow already?

[via ArsTechnica]

TAGS » Facebook

POSTED IN » World Wide Web

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About the author: Ashraf View all posts by Ashraf

Happily married to the most beautiful woman ever, Ashraf is the founder of dotTech. Ashraf spends insane hours on dotTech (usually writing articles but sometimes doing absolutely nothing except staring). Yes he is weird, but he is also very friendly.

5 Comments »

SilenceIsGolden October 5, 2012 at 1:03 AM (comment permalink) -

Yes, wow. Scary, that’s the only thing I can think of…
I will keep refusing to be assimilated by the Borg collective that calls itself Facebook these days!

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Ashraf October 5, 2012 at 1:05 AM (comment permalink) -
Mr. Boss

@SilenceIsGolden: Same here. The only Facebook account I have is for dotTech.

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RobCr October 5, 2012 at 3:06 AM (comment permalink) -

The biggest problem the Earth faces is not Climate change (aka governments introducing Carbon Taxes, etc, to sway us away from coal fired electricity generation)
If I could quote my old friend Bogie “That won’t amount to a hill of beans” compared to what the world’s growing population will do to the planet.
But I have a solution.

When God finally visits me, he will ask what should he do to reduce the population.
I will say eliminate the following groups -
- Those that play, produce, or like heavy Rock.
- Those that play, produce, or like Rap.

Now I have another group to add, and that gets rid of one seventh of the population.

Rob
PS If he also offers me to choose one of the following -
a) Create world peace
or
b) Eliminate body hair
I am leaning towards ‘b’

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Louis October 5, 2012 at 7:20 AM (comment permalink) -

I live and work in China, and regularly read the online newspapers from my home country, South Africa. I also post comments on the newspaper’s blog page — however they required ‘my’ facebook account before accepting my comments. So I created a facebook account only for that purpose, and since I absolutely will not – ever – give fb my real name etc, I created an absolutely fake fb account, which is very active thank you very much ! My guess is a very large percentage of that 1 M ‘active’ accounts are similarly fake, albeit also for many other valid reasons. What I don’t get is how a large newspaper company can force people to join a ”for profit” company like fb — it seems far too many entities still naively think fb is some kind of big social service, instead of the reality that it’s just a moneymaking and intelligence collecting company. Wake up you numbercrunchers and smell the coffee already !

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Jimbo October 5, 2012 at 8:39 AM (comment permalink) -

Let me add to Louis’ comment.
Many Facebook pages are not made for individuals but for ’causes’ or ‘polls’ etc. therefore each facebook account doesn’t necessarilly correspond to a unique individual.
Also, some people have multiple accounts and I personally know of two active accounts opened by people who are now deceased.

Bottom line…. 1 Billion Facebook accounts doesn’t mean 1 Billion separate, living people using Facebook.

Cheers

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