Facebook hits 2 billion monthly users; Youtube, Whatsapp et al. trailing

Facebook as at Tuesday June 27, 2017; had officially registered two billion monthly users, its founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg, confirmed.

Zuckerberg broke the news on his Facebook wall stressing that the network was making progress in connecting the world.

The company reached the billion mark in October 2012, he further confirmed in response to a comment. Facebook was founded thirteen years ago (February 2004) and is currently headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States.

On the issue of the number of users catching up with the world’s population of seven billion people, Marck said, ‘‘We still have a long way to go to connect everyone. But we must do more than just connect — we must bring people closer together.’‘

The company says more than 175 million people declare they “love” something on the site daily and an average of more than 800 million people hit Facebook’s like button.

Facebook users will likely see a personalized video celebrating the milestone in the next few days. With soaring profits reported last year, one of its biggest challenge is the fake news phenomenon which it is working to cure.

How does Facebook compare with other social media networks

Tech Crunch reports that the new milestone (Two billion users) makes Facebook the largest social app in terms of logged-in users. It beats YouTube’s 1.5 billion, WeChat’s 889 million, Twitter’s 328 million and Snapchat’s estimated 255 million.

‘‘Beyond YouTube, only Facebook’s other apps have more than 1 billion, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with 1.2 billion each. Instagram might soon join that club as it recently rocketed past 700 million,’‘ they added.

Interestingly, it is the developing world that has boosted Facebook’s growth the last 10 years. The company has met that market halfway with optimized applications for cheap Android smartphones and low-bandwidth connections.

‘‘It’s added 746 million users in Asia and the rest of World region since hitting 1 billion users total. Meanwhile, it only added 41 million in the U.S. and Canada,’‘ they added.

1917: 1.7 billion total people on earth

2017: 2 billion people use facebook pic.twitter.com/yTeqZBeOKD

— Vala Afshar (ValaAfshar) June 27, 2017