Facebook Has a Billion Users, But Are They All Human?

Also, there are currently 219 billion photos uploaded to the site, and people have pushed that funny little "Like" button 1.13 trillion times.

Mark Zuckerberg is celebrating Facebook's one billionth user, who signed up recently. That means that a seventh of the planet can catch up on all the latest FarmVille news, while getting their fill of kitty cat pictures and seeing what their friends are eating for lunch. That is, if all one billion were actually human.

Still, I've got to wonder how many of those one billion people are actually real individual Facebook users. I know that, in my own friends list, there are at least two deceased people, one guy who regularly uses two separate profiles, and one person who is locked up in jail with no Internet access. I'm sure everyone can think of similar examples from their own friends list.

Zuckerberg's message characterizes the one billion as "people using Facebook actively each month," which, given my example above, I find it dubious.

Along with the message, Zuckerberg gives a link to a page with some interesting demographics. Currently the median Facebook user's age is 22, and the countries with the most users are Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States. That list is in alphabetical order, but it shows a clear spread way beyond the English speaking countries where Facebook first gained the most traction. (It also shows that I'm pretty ancient by Facebook standards.) Also, there are currently 219 billion photos uploaded to the site, and people have pushed that funny little "Like" button 1.13 trillion times.

DVICE

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