17 September,2009 07:54 AM IST | | Agencies
Facebook's user base is nearly as large as the US population and, for the first time, the site has turned a profit.
That was announcedu00a0 yesterday from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who thanked the site's users for helping its online community cross the 300 million threshold.
There are about 307 million people living in the United States, according to the US Census Bureau.
"We're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone," Zuckerberg wrote on the company's blog.
The social networking site, while popular with its exploding user base, has struggled to turn a profit.
But Zuckerberg said the company became profitable last quarter, beating its goal of getting out of the red by the end of 2010.
In July, the California startup company announced it had hit the 250 million-user mark, which indicates it has grown by 50 million users in two months. That's more than 800,000 new users per day.
About 70 per cent of Facebook's users are outside the US, according to statistics posted by the company. Over the past year, the social network has seen a challenge from Twitter.
