In yet another impressive achievement for the social media giant (does giant even do it justice anymore?), CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the Facebook community is now 2 billion people strong (in terms of monthly active users). Given that it started as nothing more than a college directory for the students of Harvard University in 2004, it is safe to say that the project has exceeded expectations.
“As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people!” Zuckerberg wrote. “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.”
Supplementing their leader’s initial post, product director Mike Nowak and product manager Guillermo Spiller later published an entry in the company’s newsroom, noting that much of its success is owed to the “millions of smaller communities and individuals who are sharing and making meaningful contributions every day.”
Indeed, on a daily basis, Facebook now sees more than 175 million people sharing a “love” reaction and more than 800 million people “liking” a post. And Facebook Groups now sees more than 1 billion monthly users.
So to say “thank you,” the social media platform is creating a few new personalized experiences over the course of the next few days.
First off, the social network promises a “personalized video to celebrate bringing the world closer together.” You will either be able to view your version of the video in your News Feed or by checking out facebook.com/goodaddsup. Furthermore, Facebook will start to thank its users for connecting with others — whether that is clicking “love” on someone’s post, wishing a friend a happy birthday, or creating a group. Any of these actions will precipitate a message in their News Feed thanking them for their action.
The product folks also noted that Facebook will begin “featuring fun facts about how people are contributing to the community.” We will just have to wait and see exactly how that manifests itself.
So if you found yourself spending a lot of time on Facebook today, do not worry, you are not alone. Two billion other people probably did the same thing.
