For any who doubted, Facebook remains the dominant social network, one of the largest sites on the Web — and it just keeps growing.
The highlights of the social network’s daily and monthly active users were released as part of the company’s second quarter 2003 results posted for investors and the media this week.
Facebook Reaches 1.15 Billion: Growth Highlights
Overall, Facebook currently has 1.15 billion active monthly users. That’s up from 1.11 billion Facebook users we reported three months ago and a 21 percent increase over the past year. Facebook also saw growth in daily active users up 27 percent over last year for a total of 699 million.
The social network saw growth in the all-important mobile market too. Mobile monthly users hit 819 million as of June 30, 2013. That’s a 51 percent increase over the same time last year.
At least, that’s according to numbers the company reveals. Although some analysts question Facebook’s user numbers, as a public company they have an obligation not to intentionally deceive investors and the public.
In the U.S. and Canada
While much of that expansion is occurring in developing markets, in the U.S. and Canada, Facebook remains the site most people are visiting, reported TechCrunch recently.
In North America, about 3 million new users were added in the last three months. Facebook says that 198 million people are active on the site monthly here and in Canada. That is a slight increase over the figure three months ago. The site has added about 3 million active monthly users every quarter since late 2011.
An Engaged Audience
And as the audience grows, so does its attention to the site. The company says the average user is spending nearly 18 minutes a day on Facebook. That’s more than two hours a week. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters this week that Facebook has also fully penetrated the teen market in the U.S.
Facebook’s popular image and video sharing service is also making impressive strides. There are 130 million users of Instagram Video alone since it was launched last month and they’ve uploaded about 5 million videos in that time.
If your business maintains an active page on Facebook or is trying to reach new customers through advertising, this news mean your potential audience keeps expanding. And video and images are key to engagement.
Shawn Hessinger
Hi Josh,
I’m sure most people aren’t surprised to see that Facebook is still growing. Perhaps the real question is how you can leverage it most effectively for your small business. And no matter how many users there may be, it’s also important to realize how easy it is to have your message lost among all those voices.
I’m sure Facebook will continue to grow until either everyone has a Facebook or some new social media website comes along.
Tiffany Brock
And that’s exactly why I always recommend to advertise through Facebook.
It’s now not a matter of surprise seeing Facebook growing rapidly. From my standpoint, it’s all about relationships and Facebook is the right platform for this for small businesses to get engaged with their real fans and customers.
With that amount of growing user base as Joshua mentioned in this article, Facebook is simply going to be the sole business platform for small business in terms of getting in touch with real consumers.
Facebook dominates the web right now, they are even ahead of Google in Alexa. I wonder how long it will last.
What’s even more surprising is that the users are becoming younger and younger. We conducted a study on children aged 6-12 and most of them are on Facebook already. That’s a clear sign that this website will become an indispensable part of the lives of most of the world’s population for the next 10 years.