Facebook reaches 500 million user milestone today

This announcement means that 7.4% of the estimated 6.79 billion world population is now signed up to the site.

It has taken only five months to add the last 100 million users, while the first 100 million took it almost five years

Seventy per cent of users are outside the US, particularly from the developing countries, and one-quarter of all users are logging in and updating their pages from their mobile phones. 

Facebook has captured the attention of federal regulators and lawmakers who are struggling to protect consumers and their privacy. The privately held company still thinks of itself as a startup and claims that it is learning how to handle the new responsibilities of its half billion netizens. 

Looking at its speed of growth, a billion users is possible, especially if the company's focus on low-penetration countries like Russia, South Korea and Japan work out (it is banned in China). Facebook says that it is localising apps and services for those places, and encouraging third-party developers to do the same.

Arun Kumar, head of digital for Asia-Pacific at Mediabrands Singapore, believes that given the fact that Facebook is growing in countries with large populations, it is only a matter of time before the social media company reaches its one billion user milestone. 

Responding to the security settings and consumer privacy, Kumar says: "Facebook has been responding to these concerns and has changed its privacy settings on a number of occasions, so much that users can't keep track of it any more. I think this is going to be a continuous dialogue but remember, Facebook only puts data which users want to share. So some amount of onus does lie with the users too." 

Going forwards, Kumar believes that Facebook must launch location-based services. "Most users access Facebook through their mobile devices and this promises to be a huge opportunity to its user base. Foursquare has already taken a lead in this direction and even though its user base is not too large, Facebook must invent ways to counter its popularity."