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Half a billion people now have Facebook profiles
IT News |
22/07/2010
Social networking website Facebook has now chalked up more than half a billion users around the world, it has been revealed.
Just six years after being founded as a college-room project at Harvard University in the US, the site has spread to all quarters of the globe and enjoys an increasingly high profile.
In terms of social media, Facebook is not only the largest single website on the internet, but also continues to be the fastest growing.
Only in Russia, China and Japan has the portal failed to assert an industry-leading presence at present.
Facebook's latest figures reveal that half of the 500 million user base log on to their accounts every day, browsing the site and updating their profiles for an average of 34 minutes.
The company also reports that 150 million members use mobile devices to access their accounts, a statistic Richard Allan, Facebook's head of policy for Europe, has described as the website's "quiet revolution".
"Facebook made available to everybody what was once only available to the internet's inside circle; the ability to build a site, promote information and share ideas with your one community," he told the Guardian.
However, critics have warned that the website's popularity may decline over time, following the model of earlier social networking phenomena such as MySpace, Bebo and Friends Reunited.
Others have expressed concern about the security of the website, its privacy controls, the online publication of sensitive information, and indeed Facebook's wider influence on society as a whole.
Earlier this year, the website found itself at the centre of a media storm when it announced plans to share information with third-party websites.
Posted by Stephen Wilkinson
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