Did you log into Facebook on Monday? So did 999,999,999 other users
For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg talking about the Messenger app during the Facebook F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco in March. For the first time, a billion people used Facebook in a single day on Monday, Aug. 24, and Mr. Zuckerberg marked the occasion with a post on his Facebook page, saying that one out of seven people on Earth logged in to the social network to connect with their friends and family.
Eric Risberg/AP/File
If you were on Facebook on Monday, you were one in a billion users who logged in to the site, according to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social network giant.
Monday marked the first time one billion people used Facebook in a single day, Mr. Zuckerberg posted on his personal Facebook page Thursday. He called the record “an amazing milestone.”
“It's just the beginning of connecting the whole world,” said the 31-year-old founder, who marked the occasion with a montage of posts made around the world.
According to company figures, the site had nearly 1.5 billion users who logged in at least once for the month of June, and on average sees about 844 million daily users checking in on their phones.
Facebook gained its billionth user in October 2012, reported BBC. “The question is how can it continue to grow? Surely it will plateau at some point, right?" wrote BBC’s technology correspondent Dave Lee. "Yes – but we're a long way off that."
Mr. Lee reported that users in the United States, Europe, and India have almost peaked. “But there are huge gaps - Africa, much of Asia, some of Latin America. That's where Facebook is focused on now,” he wrote.
Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg also celebrated the occasion by describing the Internet as a source of inspiration. “When I think about what it means to have a billion people connected, I think about the man I met in western India who told me that the Internet is bringing down the cost of food in his village,” she said on Facebook. “I think about the British volunteer medics that saved dozens of children's lives with a single video.”
But critics say the new record also serves as a reminder that the majority of the world isn’t on Facebook.
“In the founder’s own words, ‘On Monday, one in seven people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.’ Put differently, six in seven people on Earth used other methods to connect with their friends and family,” wrote Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes.
Facebook’s initiatives to bring Internet access to undeveloped communities have been criticized for breaking principles of net neutrality, as they rely on using the social network as a gateway to the web.