Facebook Passes 500 Million User Milestone, CEO Says
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc. Photographer: Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg
Facebook Inc., the world’s most popular social-networking service, reached 500 million users today, up from about 400 million in February, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said.
The company is marking the milestone with a new application called Facebook Stories, which lets users share their experiences on the site, Zuckerberg said today on the company’s blog. The service, which supplanted News Corp.’s MySpace as the No. 1 social network two years ago, started in 2004 at Harvard University, where Zuckerberg was a student.
“I could have never imagined all of the ways people would use Facebook when we were getting started six years ago,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Facebook has overcome privacy concerns and increased competition from companies like Google Inc. to stay on the growth track. In May, the company simplified privacy settings to make it easier for people to protect their personal data. The millions of users have helped Facebook attract big-name advertising, such as Starbucks Corp. and JetBlue Airways Corp.
Market researchers had already estimated that Facebook had more than 500 million users. Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc. pegged its users at more than 519 million in April, up from 411 million in September.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net
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