# Facebook...One Billion users? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 5, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758 "2012-10-05T00:52:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/1 "2012-10-05T00:52:49Z")
So this actually came up in a Facebook feed, and I found a story [here](http://newyork.newsday.com/business/facebook-users-pass-1-billion-mark-1.4076626). Am I nuts for thinking this number is grossly inflated? According to [this](http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm), there are 2.3 billion Internet users (which, actually, is a bit more than I would have guessed). So facebook has penetrated nearly 40% of all internet users? And, [according to Facebook](http://newsroom.fb.com/News/One-Billion-People-on-Facebook-1c9.aspx), this is active users each month. Obviously, they have reasons galore to inflate their numbers, especially given their stock price where it’s at vs their IPO. This all stinks of bullshit to me. Is there any possibility it’s true? I was somewhat surprised that worldwide internet penetration was as high as it was, but I can’t believe that 40% of those connected to the internet are on Facebook, and are active monthly users at that. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/2 "2012-10-05T00:59:25Z")
Well, lots of people in developing countries can get to Internet cafes or have old mobile phones with service near cities, and even [crummy phones can get on Facebook](http://gizmodo.com/5820555/facebook-for-every-phone-now-even-people-with-crappy-dumbphones-can-check-facebook). So that’s not entirely surprising. Then there are the people who have duplicate Facebook accounts (personal vs business, for instance), or accounts in the names of their pets. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/3 "2012-10-05T01:14:48Z")
Alexa estimates Facebook’s daily reach at around [43% of global internet users](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com). So 40% active in a given month seems plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/4 "2012-10-05T01:20:19Z")
Facebook: The McDonalds of the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/5 "2012-10-05T01:32:48Z")
> [@Tangent](#): > > Facebook: The McDonalds of the internet. Like Valley Girls really like like it. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/6 "2012-10-05T01:59:59Z")
Of course that number is bullshit. Does anyone really think 1 in 7 people in the world are on Facebook? If you do any superficial research, it becomes clear how and why the number is inflated. According to Facebook, an active user is [defined](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/those-millions-on-facebook-some-may-not-actually-visit/) the following way: > [@](#): > > If you managed to wade through to Page 44 of Facebook’s prospectus, you’d discover that the company provides a definition of an “active user” — and it is unlikely to be what you expected. > > Facebook counts as “active” users who go to its Web site or its mobile site. But it also counts an entire other category of people who don’t click on [facebook.com](http://facebook.com) as “active users.” According to the company, a user is considered active if he or she “took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party Web site that is integrated with Facebook.” > > Come again? > > In other words, every time you press the “Like” button on [NFL.com](http://NFL.com), for example, you’re an “active user” of Facebook. Perhaps you share a Twitter message on your Facebook account? That would make you an active Facebook user, too. Have you ever shared music on Spotify with a friend? You’re an active Facebook user. If you’ve logged into Huffington Post using your Facebook account and left a comment on the site — and your comment was automatically shared on Facebook — you, too, are an “active user” even though you’ve never actually spent any time on [facebook.com](http://facebook.com). So the definition is a bit more broad than most would think. Which is also why is more susceptible to being inflated. Not only from people who have a Facebook account, but don’t actually interact with Facebook via their website, but also from bots created to help businesses advertise. As Facebook noted, they are having problems with [bots](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/03/face-facebook-likes-crackdown) and fraudulent likes. Because “likes” and, more generally, online visibility has been commodified, there is now a incentive to game the system. People pay for likes. This was reported by [NPR](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/16/152736671/this-guy-will-sell-you-sell-you-1-000-facebook-likes) fairly recently. > [@](#): > > When Melen sells likes to a company, he goes through an intermediary, who in turn could be working with people anywhere in the world. The people on the other end are just doing it for money. They get paid a very small amount — 10 cents, say — each time they like a company. > > “Right now on the black market, you can actually buy and sell bundles of Facebook account credentials,” says Ben Zhao, a computer science professor at UC Santa Barbara. “Tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars for hundreds or thousands of Facebook accounts.” > > In some cases, there are no people involved at all. Those fake accounts are controlled by robots and create fake data. (Melen says all his likers are real people.) > > … > > Facebook knows this sort of thing is going on. And the company has created an elaborate system to root out bad data. It has social bot hunters whose job is to track down fake Facebook profiles and kick them off the network. But it’s still happening. > > Another company that sells likes showed us a Nashville country singer who was a client. She had a lot of likes — mostly from Egypt. So even if some of those billion are actual people, many of them are not actually interested in Facebook or what it has to offer. Even in the best light, that means those billion user stat greatly inflates the reach, importance, and value of Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/7 "2012-10-05T02:21:00Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > So the definition is a bit more broad than most would think. I’m actually fine with that definition. If you have a Facebook account, and “like” a story on a page without being (knowingly) logged into Facebook, but actually are logged into Facebook, I’ll absolutely count you as an active user. It still seems way high or me even with that metric. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/8 "2012-10-05T02:33:56Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I’m actually fine with that definition. If you have a Facebook account, and “like” a story on a page without being (knowingly) logged into Facebook, but actually are logged into Facebook, I’ll absolutely count you as an active user. It still seems way high or me even with that metric. Why? If the report is given as a sign to potential investors, it’s incredibly misleading given that most of those people cannot be readily commodified by Facebook. If they report this number as a stat to show how meaningful or useful Facebook is, it’s also incredibly misleading. Using your Facebook ID to sign into the Huffington Post website tells us very little about how that person values Facebook. It’s just an easy way to ID yourself. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/9 "2012-10-05T03:05:45Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Why? If the report is given as a sign to potential investors, it’s incredibly misleading given that most of those people cannot be readily commodified by Facebook. If they report this number as a stat to show how meaningful or useful Facebook is, it’s also incredibly misleading. Using your Facebook ID to sign into the Huffington Post website tells us very little about how that person values Facebook. It’s just an easy way to ID yourself. I’m trying to be generous and as inclusive with the numbers here as possible. Do 1 in 7 people in the world have an active Facebook account that they are logged into such that these statistics can be true? That’s my question. Even with that generous metric, it seems implausible to me. More plausible is a large number of multiple accounts. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/10 "2012-10-05T03:05:53Z")
A lot of people have more than one account, and a lot of people have a business account and a personal account. Perhaps they are not taking the duplicate accounts out of the calculations. ---
**Author:** ![Postariti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Postariti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Postariti)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/11 "2012-10-05T05:21:37Z")
pulykamell - Go back and read brickbacon’s second quote. "Right now on the black market, you can actually buy and sell bundles of Facebook account credentials… hundreds or thousands of Facebook accounts. “In some cases, there are no people involved at all. Those fake accounts are controlled by robots and create fake data.” So there are probably millions of fake accounts, with more being created every second by bots. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/12 "2012-10-05T13:42:45Z")
> [@Postariti](#): > > pulykamell - Go back and read brickbacon’s second quote. I did. I was only responding to the question of why I was okay with the first definition of “Facebook user.” My assumption is that a good percentage of that is bots and duplicate pages for pets and things like that. If it’s actual users who happen to be logged into Facebook while they’re “liking” other pages, I’m find with counting those as users. If you’re sharing your activity on Facebook, that’s an “active user” by my definition. Why shouldn’t it be? You might not be aware of it, but you are logged in, and your friends see “Joe Blow likes NFL football.” If somebody “likes” my webpage, I don’t really care if they know they’ve just shared it on their timeline. All I care about is that all their friends see that it’s been shared. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/13 "2012-10-05T14:00:20Z")
And then you have people like me that have a Facebook account with no face. That is, I signed up for one because you had to have an account to view or gain access to something you actually thought that you wanted to see. Then never actually used the account. The account means nothing to me other than some sites ask you about your Facebook account; haven’t logged into yet this year. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/14 "2012-10-05T14:05:07Z")
In fact I just tried to login and cannot remember my user name or password. I may someday make a new one and push the “user” base towards 2 billion. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![lost4life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@lost4life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lost4life)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/15 "2012-10-05T15:59:39Z")
> [@Pai325](#): > > A lot of people have more than one account, and a lot of people have a business account and a personal account. Perhaps they are not taking the duplicate accounts out of the calculations. I have 6. One for me, one for my band, one joke one for my alter ego in the band, an anonymous one for getting coupons, deals and stuff I don’t want on my personal page, and one each for my cats. People like me can greatly inflate the numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/16 "2012-10-05T16:35:05Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > And then you have people like me that have a Facebook account with no face. That is, I signed up for one because you had to have an account to view or gain access to something you actually thought that you wanted to see. Then never actually used the account. The account means nothing to me other than some sites ask you about your Facebook account; haven’t logged into yet this year. Then you don’t count, because the number only includes those who have been an active user within the previous month. That makes the number even more impressive because it doesn’t count people like you and me who created a Facebook account for some long forgotten reason and never use it, even to Like. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/17 "2012-10-05T16:59:22Z")
> [@Pai325](#): > > A lot of people have more than one account, and a lot of people have a business account and a personal account. Perhaps they are not taking the duplicate accounts out of the calculations. Agreed. Plus, some spammers create multiple accounts so that when they’re caught spamming with one account, they just use another account. Back in the day, some people created multiple accounts so they could get ahead in some game thing called Mafia Wars - don’t know if that still exists. I also know people who have their own personal account, plus they create an account for their cat or dog too. ---
**Author:** ![core\_dump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@core\_dump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/core_dump)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/18 "2012-10-06T04:01:08Z")
I have personally created well over a million accounts for previous “employers”. Many get suspended within a week however I believe Facebook may still count these because they can be unlocked by inputting DOB and answering a captcha. Other accounts never get suspended because they are just used for “likes” and other nonsense. These definitely would still be counted as users but not active. And there is yet a 3rd subset which actually does get logged in on a weekly basis and would appear to be a real user. So yes, I think account counts are totally unrealistic and of no consequence. Seems like this would be just begging for stock manipulation. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/19 "2012-10-06T07:26:20Z")
> [@EmilyG](#): > > Agreed. > > Plus, some spammers create multiple accounts so that when they’re caught spamming with one account, they just use another account. Back in the day, some people created multiple accounts so they could get ahead in some game thing called Mafia Wars - don’t know if that still exists. It does, and it’s far from the only game that will allow you to benefit from having multiple accounts. Though the way to really get ahead is to join one of those groups where everyone will add you if you’ll add them. And I’m sure some of those could be bots. ---
**Author:** ![chumball](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eb8c5e/32.png) [@chumball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chumball)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facebook-one-billion-users/636758/20 "2012-10-06T20:56:14Z")
i too have a facebook account which i started in jan., have not been back since Feb. i just registered here; this is my first post. Im beginning to think i have a social network phobia! I’m not shy in actual public, just online i guess. everyone i know is on facebook but me. I’m not sure what to do here either.