Reuters/Rick Wilking
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg announced the new metric in a post on his Facebook page on Thursday, noting that 1 in 7 people on Earth used the social network to connect with their friends and family on Monday.
It was only a matter of time before Facebook reached the big traffic milestone. The company, which has 1.49 billion average monthly users, announced that it had an average of 968 million daily users in June.
With 1 billion daily users on Monday, Facebook has become an online community that is bigger than the population of every country in the world save India and China. And it has done so in just under 12 years.
Since Facebook was founded as a social network for college students in 2004, the company has evolved its service and expanded the breadth of projects it is focused on.
As Facebook product boss Chris Cox explained in his own post about the new milestone on Thursday: "Though the work's changed quite a bit - what used to be helping Michigan State students plan parties is now about delivering a proper experience on 2G, a legit Burmese translation, crazy streaming video infrastructure, autonomous drones to beam down internet, virtual reality -- they are all connected by the same wonderful idea."
Zuckerberg noted that Monday's 1 billion users was a one-day high, which is different than the daily averages that it reports in its quarterly earnings. And it's worth noting that Facebook estimates in its earnings report that less than 5% of its reported worldwide monthly users in 2014 were "duplicate" accounts and less than 2% were "user-misclassified" or "undesirable" accounts.
Still, the fact that 1 billion people logged on to Facebook in one day marks an important milestone and underscores the social network's continuing growing power.
Here's Zuckerberg's full post:
We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.
On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.
When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different. This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it's just the beginning of connecting the whole world.
I'm so proud of our community for the progress we've made. Our community stands for giving every person a voice, for promoting understanding and for including everyone in the opportunities of our modern world.
A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values.
Thank you for being part of our community and for everything you've done to help us reach this milestone. I'm looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together.