Facebook hits 500m user milestone

Facebook hits half a billion users

Social network giant Facebook has registered its 500 millionth member, the firm has announced.

The site, which launched in 2004, has gained around 100 million new users in the last six months.

One site that appears to be growing alongside Facebook is Twitter.

Measurements of Twitter traffic are notoriously difficult as many users do not interact with the service through the website. Instead, they use desktop software and mobile phones. However, it is estimated to be approaching 200m users.

Facebook

has announced that it now has 500m active users, just six years after it was launched. The site has become the poster child of social networking on the web. While some others have seen growth, MySpace, Flickr

and Bebo appear to have declined in the past year, according to these figures from Nielsen. Interesting international variations are seen, both in the amount of time Facebook users spend on the site each month and in the competing networks' popularity in different countries.