X

Facebook: Over 955 million users, 543 million mobile users

In first-ever earnings report, company points to more than 955 million monthly active users, over 552 million daily active users in June 2012, and more than 543 million monthly active users on mobile.

Emil Protalinski
2 min read
Facebook About screen
Screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET

Three months ago, Facebook revealed it had more than 901 million monthly active users, and 526 million daily active users, and 488 million monthly mobile users. Now, during the company's Q2 2012 earnings report, the social-networking giant has updated those figures to 955 million, 552 million, and 543 million, respectively.

Here's how Facebook broke down the growth:

  • Monthly active users (MAUs) were 955 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 29 percent year-over-year.
  • Daily active users (DAUs) were 552 million on average for June 2012, an increase of 32 percent year-over-year.
  • Mobile MAUs were 543 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 67 percent year-over-year.

Mobile has of course seen the biggest change. Today's update shows that 56.86 percent of Facebook's total user base accesses the service from a mobile device. That number has been slowly growing from the 40 percent mark last year through and past the 50 percent mark this year.

It's important to note that not all mobile users necessarily view the social network from both mobile and desktop. Of course many check the service just from the desktop, but there's also a growing number who access it strictly from mobile.

Facebook has said many times that mobile is top priority ("We're going to become a mobile company"). Mobile is of course the future of the whole technology industry, and Facebook knows this.

The company also noted that approximately 81 percent of its monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada. I listened in on Facebook's first earnings for more international numbers.

Facebook broke down its 955 million MAUs as follows:

  • U.S. and Canada: 186 million
  • Europe: 246 million
  • Asia: 255 million
  • Rest of the world: 268 million

Facebook broke down its 552 million DAUs as follows:

  • U.S. and Canada: 130 million
  • Europe: 154 million
  • Asia: 129 million
  • Rest of the world: 139 million

Facebook did not share a breakdown for mobile MAUs. This may be because of the difficulty of figuring out where a given mobile user resides.

Many services report only cumulative users, a metric that doesn't include inactive accounts. Facebook's user count metric is much better because it defines a user as someone who's logged in within the last 30 days. This doesn't eliminate the issue of one person having multiple accounts or fake accounts, and that's why the social-networking giant bans tens of thousands of accounts per day.