Facebook has released some startling figures today, which underlines just how big the site has become.
Speaking to journalists at the UK headquarters, with TechRadar in attendance, Facebook revealed just how many people log on each day and the stats are pretty mind-blowing. The company also noted that one of its apps, 'Farmville', is more popular than its major rival in the social-networking world – Twitter.
Here come the numbers: worldwide Facebook is clocking up 200 billion page views a month, with 350 million users globally logging into the site.
When it comes to the site's online chat function, 1.6 billion messages are sent every single day and 2.5 billion photos uploaded a month (around a thousand a second).
Facebook is also now hitting 23 million unique users a month in the UK, with each of those people logging on spending around 25 minutes on the website a day.
With so many users, Facebook is keen to push itself beyond that of a place that you come to see what your friends are up to.
Part of the movement
In a video, founder Mark Zuckerberg called Facebook "a movement not a website" and noted that now is "a magical time for the company, as we are way closer to the beginning than the end."
This was re-iterated by Facebook's Head of Strategy and Planning, Trevor Johnson, who told TechRadar: "The Facebook experience for every individual is different. We have changed the site a lot, and we hope users keep up with these things.
"The site's now made up of many elements – apps, homepage, games, groups."
To prove the popularity of these extra-curricular sections of Facebook, Johnson explained: "Applications make up a huge part of Facebook. There are over 90,000 applications on Facebook.
"69 million active users are using FarmVille alone, that's more users than Twitter."
Interestingly, Facebook noted that its demographic is getting older, with the 35+ category growing the fastest and 53 per cent of all those who log on in a month come back on a daily basis.
"Facebook is not just about adding photos and gaining friends, it's integrated in lives," notes Johnson.
Twitter may well be the website of the moment, but one glance at these figures show that it's still got a long way to go if it wants to truly dominate in this social-networked world.
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