Facebook Is Now Bigger Than The Largest Country On Earth

Facebook Is Now Bigger Than The Largest Country On Earth
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles during an event to launch in Colombia an app providing free basic Internet service via cellphone connections, in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles during an event to launch in Colombia an app providing free basic Internet service via cellphone connections, in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

If Facebook were a country, it would be the most populous nation on earth.

The huge social network said Wednesday that 1.39 billion people log in to Facebook each month to scroll their News Feeds, communicate with friends and look at photos.

That’s more than the entire population of China, the world’s most populous country, which the CIA last estimated to have 1.36 billion people.

facebook size

The comparison to China is somewhat ironic, since Facebook is largely blocked there. But that didn’t stop Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg from visiting last fall, where he met with Chinese business executives and conducted an interview in Mandarin.

Although Facebook’s user base is still expanding, growth has slowed in recent quarters because there simply aren’t as many people left to join the site.

facebook mau
Data for chart courtesy of Statista.

That’s one of the reasons Zuckerberg has been pushing Internet.org, an initiative backed by a handful of tech companies, including Facebook, Samsung, Ericsson and Qualcomm, that aims to get Internet access to the two-thirds of the world not yet online.

Facebook reported revenue of $3.85 billion for the three months ending in December, up 49 percent over the same period last year. The company's stock is trading at $76.24, up nearly 22 percent over the last 12 months.

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