As the fictional Sean Parker might put it: ‘A million people logging in to Facebook on a single day isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion people’.
The non-fictional Mark Zuckerberg has announced a new milestone for the social network: one billion daily users.
“For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day. On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family,” wrote Zuckerberg in a post on his personal profile.
“When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different. This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it’s just the beginning of connecting the whole world.”
The news is no great surprise: Facebook has been growing steadily, and in the second quarter of 2015 it averaged 968 million daily active users, and 1.49 billion monthly active users.
Based on its figure of 844 million daily active mobile users during that period, Facebook may well reach the total of 1bn people logging in from smartphones and tablets in a single day in the not-too distant future too.
“A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values,” wrote Zuckerberg.
The milestone came shortly after Facebook revealed its latest product, Facebook M, a virtual assistant within its Messenger application that blends artificial intelligence technology with human “trainers” to complete tasks for users.
The social network is also testing a Twitter-like breaking news app, and competing with YouTube by launching a way for video creators to make money from advertising around their clips.
On the latter front, Facebook has also just announced new tools to tackle “freebooting” - people ripping videos from YouTube and uploading them to Facebook without the permission of their original creators.
Facebook has also unveiled its first solar-powered drone, while Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan recently announced that they are expecting a baby girl.
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