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Facebook hits 1 billion users

Social networking site reaches new "active" user milestone on September 14; over 1.13 trillion "likes" since 2009, 219 billion photos uploaded, 140.3 billion new friend connections.

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Social networking behemoth Facebook now has 1 billion users who are "actively" spending time with the site, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today. The milestone was reached on September 14 at 12:45 p.m. PDT, and means about one seventh of the world's population is a member of the site.

What's cooler than a million? A billion.
What's cooler than a million? A billion.

It is unclear how "active user" is defined, but NBC reports that fake users and bot accounts were not counted as part of the 1 billion.

The social networking site, which Zuckerberg created in his Harvard dorm room less than a decade ago, hosts a range of games. Zynga and Electronic Arts are currently squabbling over the companies' Facebook titles The Ville and The Sims Social, and Resistance developer Insomniac Games recently launched its first game for the platform, Outernauts.

Zuckerberg also shared several Facebook metrics. According to data from the company, Facebook has seen the following:

--1.13 trillion "likes" since launch in February 2009.
--140.3 billion friend connections.
--219 billion photos uploaded (265 billion if deleted photos were counted).
--17 billion location-tagged posts, including check-ins.
--62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times.

Other data reveals the median age of a Facebook user is 22, down from a median age of 23 when Facebook hit 500 million users in July 2010. Additionally, the number of users who log in to Facebook via a mobile device now stands at 600 million.

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