Facebook hits milestone - 150 million users

IDG News Service — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:09:37 -0800

It was a good way for Facebook executives to welcome in the new year.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in his blog Wednesday that the social networking site had hit a big milestone - 150 million people are actively using Facebook. And another statistic of note is that nearly half of them use the network on a daily basis.

"This includes people in every continent -- even Antarctica," wrote Zuckerberg. "If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria."

The CEO also noted that people from 170 countries and territories use Facebook in 35 different languages.

Facebook grabbed a lot of attention and most likely a lot of new users during last year's political campaign. Presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen John McCain led the charge by heavily using social networking sites like Facebook, making the Internet a major political stomping ground. Obama's campaign was particularly successful, easily topping McCain in Facebook friends and Internet searches.