Facebook has 1B users: Zuckerberg

Facebook has surpassed 1 billion active monthly users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced.
That means one in seven people on Earth are on Facebook. Although Zuckerberg said the social network reached the milestone on Sept. 14, he did not make the announcement until Oct. 4.
“This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month,” Zuckerberg said. “Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.”
Although Zuckerberg said the site has breached the one billion-mark, All Facebook stats show there are about 944 million Facebook users worldwide.
“You can easily notice that the overall Facebook user base has grown by more than 30 million people,” said an Oct. 3 blog post by Maximilian H. Nierhoff.  “In total that means that there are more than 944 million Facebook users worldwide.”
So why the discrepancy? Facebook’s purge of fake user accounts last week could be a factor in the lower number reported on All Facebook.
The social media site has a presence in more than 200 sovereign territories, according to All Facebook, with 20 users in Vatican City to more than 166 million in the United States.
In a post on the site, Zuckerberg described Facebook as being part of ” a rich tradition” to help connect people.
“Facebook isn’t the first thing people have made to help us connect. We belong to a rich tradition of people making things that bring us together,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Today, we honor this tradition. We honor the humanity of the people we serve. We honor the everyday things people have always made to bring us together: Chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges, games. These are all things that connect us. And now Facebook is a part of this tradition of things that connect us too.”
Some highlights cited by Facebook, since its launch:
• More than 1.13 trillion “likes.”
• More than 140 billion “friend connections.”
• Almost 220 billion photos uploaded.
• Some 17-billion “location-tagged posts.”
• Almost 62 million songs played 22 billion times.
• Median user age of 22.
• Mobile users now number 600 million.
Facebook’s shares rose about two percent in premarket trading since the announcement, the first good news for Facebook share holders since the company went public.
Investors sued Facebook after a flawed preliminary public offering May 18. Technical glitches at the NASDAQ exchange and allegations the company deliberately divulged unfavorable information about its business prospects to privileged investors is at issue. Facebook’s stock plunged as much as 50 percent after it was introduced at $38 per share.