Facebook Reaches One Billion Active Users
Facebook, the world’s biggest social media network, has announced that it now has over 1 billion active users. The social media site reaches one in seven people on our planet. Over 600 million of them connect through mobile phones. Launched in 2004, Facebook is responsible for 1.13 trillion “Likes” and over 17 billion uploaded photos.
On his personal Facebook page, founder Mark Zuckerberg said he is proud of what the company has achieved in such a short time and feels good about giving so many people a new form of getting together.
Zuckerberg plans to expand Facebook to those areas of the world where the social media site is currently not yet dominant, like China or Russia, where local social media sites have a higher ranking. Only recently, Zuckerberg travelled to Russia where Facebook has only about seven million users.
In many African countries, Facebook has a simplified version which can be displayed on basic mobile phones that have no internet access. Many people, especially in rural areas, ask for such phones “with Facebook on them”.
In contrast, Facebook growth has been slowing down in Europe and North America. Here, Zuckerberg wants to expand advertising on by using the personal data of each of its members. This could cause protests as especially European users are skeptical of Facebook’s privacy guidelines.
The company’s main income sources are advertising and other non-standard features like social games. Users in the United States and Canada make up over 50% of the company’s income. The California-based company worries that, as more and more people connect via mobile phone, ads will not be clicked on as often as on desktop computers or laptops. Facebook is looking for more ways to make money. It is becoming a platform for other apps.
Zuckerberg also wants to help Facebook get a better image after the stock market disaster last May. The company suffered a financial loss when its share prices started out at $38 and then dropped to almost half.
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Words
- achieve = reach, do
- ad = advertisement
- announce = to say officially
- app = small program that runs on mobile phones or tablet computers
- basic = simple
- billion = one thousand million
- California-based = the main building is in California; the company works out of California
- connect = link, unite
- currently = now
- disaster = catastrophe
- display = show
- dominant = number one
- drop = to go down
- expand = to make bigger
- feature = objects, elements, apps
- founder = person who started something
- growth = increase , expansion
- in contrast = on the other hand
- income = money, profit
- internet access = to connect to the internet
- local = the area a person lives in
- loss = defeat, failure
- non-standard = here: not free
- privacy guidelines = rules about what information a company must keep a secret and what it can give to others
- proud = to feel very good about something
- ranking = position
- reach = get to
- recently = shortly
- share = a document that shows that one part of a company belongs to you
- simplified = simple, basic
- social media network = platform on which people can communicate with each other and share photos and other documents
- source = where something comes from
- stock market = places where parts of a company can be bought and sold
- suffer = go through
- trillion = one thousand billion
- via = through