Facebook Says It Has Reached 350 Million Monthly Active Users

December 2nd, 2009 | 1 Comment | Posted in Internet News

Facebook announced via founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg that it has grown to more than 350 million monthly active users worldwide. The company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote an open letter, or rather blog post, to Facebook users to talk about the privacy changes which are about to become a reality after being announced several months ago.

The announcement, in the form of a blog post by founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, also reiterates that the company is planning to remove regional networks, something it has discussed in more detail over the summer. This change had previously been slated for late September; now, it’s coming within the next two weeks, according to the post. More about the change, from our previous coverage:

Regional network filters will no longer be available in the home page stream (Facebook says few people were using them anyway).
Regional networks will no longer appear in privacy settings (though you can still share content with everyone or a school or work network).
Groups or events that are only open to members of regional networks will now be open to everyone.
If your current regional network is a city, that information will be moved to the “Current City” field of your profile.
If your current regional network is a region, a new “Current Region” field will be listed on your profile.

So Facebook will remove the feature, which it says is used by almost half of its users, altogether as part of the privacy options revamp which should be rolled out very soon. The changes have been known for months now, a good thing considering the number of users they will affect. The new model will allow users to share their content and info with either their friends, friends of friends and everyone. The idea is to make the options simple and clear so that users know exactly what they’re sharing and with who. The privacy control page will also be simplified and some options removed or merged to make them easier to manage. Because this is such a big change Facebook will notify its users of the changes and guide them in choosing the options that suits them. The changes will be coming in the next couple of weeks.