Facebook’s Half Billion Users: Fun Facts

Half a billion people around the world are now using Facebook on a monthly basis. That means Facebook has a slightly smaller population than the continent of North America. The social network also has enough users to put 75 people on every one of the over 6.6 million square miles of Russia, the largest country in the world by landmass.

But what other fun facts can we glean from Facebook’s 500 million user milestone? Here are five fun and interesting facts for you to ponder about the world’s largest social network and most popular Website.

Facebook Nation

If Facebook were its own country, it would be the third most populous nation in the world behind China and India–both countries have populations north of one billion people. But with well over 60 official languages, and a few fun dialects like Pirate English, few countries can beat out Facebook when it comes to multinational identity. Arrrr.

Will Facebook outpace the PC?

There are well over one billion computers in use in the world today, which is twice the number of Facebook users. In 2008, research firm Gartner predicted there would be two billion active computers in the world by 2010. Assuming that both will still be going strong in three years, who will get to two billion first, the PC or Facebook? With over 150 million mobile users, and more people jumping on the Facebook bandwagon every day. I’d say Facebook is the safer bet.

Where’s Facebook?

The largest number of Facebook users live in North America with 35.4 percent of the continent actively logging on to Facebook every month, according to O’Reilly Radar. About 17 percent of Europeans are Facebookers, 2.3 percent of people living in Asia use Facebook. But nobody does Facebook like the people living in Oceania (also known as Australia and surrounding island nations). The region makes up just 2.3 percent of Facebook’s user base, but 40.3 percent of Oceania’s population like Facebook.(Click chart to enlarge)

Bigger then AOL ever was

AOL may have helped connect people online in the early days of the Internet, but even during its heyday AOL was one-fifteenth the size that Facebook is today. Amazingly, Facebook put AOL to shame without any free CD giveaways.

Worth Fifty

Facebook’s estimated value ranges somewhere between $22 and $25 billion, based on the current trading price of private Facebook stock. Since Facebook derives virtually all its value from collecting massive amounts of data from its 500 million users, each of Facebook’s 500 million users contributes about $50 or 500 Facebook credits to the company’s value.

Got any more fun Facebook facts? Leave them below.

Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul).