Facebook passes 500 million users

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc. on Wednesday issued its own eye-popping status update: The world’s most popular social networking site had surpassed 500 million users.

And now, the Internet phenomenon that has transformed how the world communicates is eyeing another distinction — connecting one out of every seven human beings on the planet.

Six years after getting its start in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook said it was aiming to have 1 billion members, matching the reach of Internet search giant Google Inc.

If it can keep up its current breakneck pace, a feat that would defy predictions from analysts, Facebook could reach that goal by next year.

“We all love to dream big around here,” said Randi Zuckerberg, who handles marketing and is the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “We are going to take a day or so to celebrate 500 million users before we start thinking about going beyond that.”

The site’s runaway growth is nearly without precedent. Last summer, Facebook had 250 million users. It has amassed 100 million new members since February alone. Now if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest.

All of which has lent credibility to Mark Zuckerberg’s confident assertion that his company could almost “guarantee” growing to 1 billion active users despite a recent spate of privacy concerns and increasing competition from Google and others. Facebook defines active users as people who have logged onto the site within the past 30 days.

“I could have never imagined all of the ways people would use Facebook when we were getting started six years ago,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Zuckerberg created Facebook as a place for college students to connect with one another. Since then it has been on a tear.

It eclipsed its former archrival, News Corp.’s MySpace, in April 2008. Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site, shoulders above Twitter Inc. with 105 million users and LinkedIn Corp. with 70 million.