Facebook is big. Since being born at Harvard as a way for students to network online, the service has grown to a scale that is nearly impossible to fathom. Today, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an update on his Facebook page that the social network has now passed an absolutely insane milestone. In just 13 years since its founding, the site now boasts two billion monthly users.
Let’s put that number in perspective for a second, using population estimates from around the globe:
- Russia: 144.1 million
- The United States: 321.4 million
- South America: 422.5 million
- North America: 579 million
- Europe: 743.1 million
- China: 1.37 billion
Monthly Facebook users: 2 billion
Oh, and let’s not forget:
Population of Earth: 7.5 billion
That means that, assuming the population estimates are within a half billion of being correct, that goofy app where you post pics of your dog and complain about the President is now used by over 25% of the entire human race, or one in every four people. Humanity is estimated to have only just hit the two billion mark in the 1920s, meaning that more people use Facebook today than were alive 100 years ago. That’s insane.
“As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people!” Zuckerberg posted to his personal Facebook profile. “We’re making progress connecting the world, and now let’s bring the world closer together. It’s an honor to be on this journey with you.”
What’s particularly impressive about this feat isn’t just the ridiculous user number, but the speed at which Facebook got there. The company reached the one billion monthly user milestone in October of 2012, meaning that it took less than five years to double that number to two billion. If there’s a ceiling of social networking, Facebook doesn’t seem to have hit it yet.
