Media Guardian Story - Facebook reaches its £1b mark

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/04/facebook-hits-billion-users-a-month Facebook is now used by 1 billion people every month, or one in every seven people in the world, its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has confirmed. The milestone means Zuckerberg has achieved his stated ambition of reaching 1 billion active monthly users just two years and three months after the social network reached the half billion mark. Facebook reached 900 million active monthly users in April. Facebook has recorded 1.13 trillion Likes, 140.3 billion friend connections and 219bn shared photos since it launched in February 2004. More than 300m photos are uploaded every day and 62.6m songs played. "Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life," wrote Zuckerberg in a Facebook timeline update on his personal account. "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." In my opinion, Facebook has become a world-wide phenomenon and is useful for various things. For example, people can communicate across the world without having to pay a substantial amount and is much easier to do also. It keeps a personal record of someone's life and this could have negative implications. For example, the if someone updates statuses about various aspects of their lives, then it will allow for people to invade their private lives and possibly threaten this. However, the fact that Facebook has had this much commercial success means that it has become one of the worlds most well-renowned businesses and is continuing to grow and further develop.