Here at Brandwatch, we love data. We love the statistics that this data provides too. Which is why we’ve collated this bumper list of Facebook statistics.

For some, these are just interesting factoids that titillate the mind and can later be brought out to impress friends over a coffee.

For marketers, these statistics can help in developing strategies to ensure you are targeting the audience you want to reach in the most effective way.

Facebook historical facts

Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard College roommates

Initially called Facemash, then Thefacebook.

Originally only open to Harvard students. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to the universities of Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. It later gradually opens to most universities in the United States and Canada

On September 26, 2006, Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address

Or you can check out our full history of Facebook that looks at the company all the way from its origins to the modern day.

Facebook financial statistics

Net income was $5.14bn for the third quarter of 2018

Facebook’s IPO raised $16 billion, making it the third largest in U.S. history

Facebook is now the 4th most valuable brand in the world with a value of $94.8bn

Since 2012, it has spent well over $22.4 billion buying competitors such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. That’s just what we know of as well. There have been lots of acquisitions where the cost was undisclosed

Facebook has 33,606 employees

Mark Zuckerberg’s salary is only $1 a year

Which isn’t really a problem when your net worth is $55.6 billion

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Facebook user and demographics statistics

There are 2.375bn billion monthly active users (as of Q3 2018).

Over 1bn of those are mobile-only users.

There are 1.49 billion daily active users.

47% of Facebook users only access the platform through mobile.

83% of parents on Facebook are friends with their children.

Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second.

68% of US adults use Facebook. 51% of them use it several times a day.

Worldwide, 26.3% of the online population use Facebook.

The average (mean) number of friends is 338, and the median (midpoint) number of friends is 200.

Half of internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does.

Of those, 24% say that they look at posts or photos on that person’s account.

Facebook usage statistics

30% of internet users use Facebook more than once a day.

45% of people get news from Facebook.

40% of people said they would share their health data with Facebook.

There are an estimated 81 million fake Facebook profiles.

The most popular page is the Facebook’s main page with 213m likes. Samsung are second with 159m, while Cristiano Ronaldo is third with 122m.

Facebook accounts for 62% of social logins made by consumers to sign into the apps and websites of publishers and brands.

200 million people use Facebook Lite – the app for the developing world’s slow connections.

Facebook takes up 22% of the internet time Americans spend on mobile devices, compared with 11% on Google search and YouTube combined.

Users spend an average of 20 minutes per day on the site.

In a month, the average user likes 10 posts, makes 4 comments, and clicks on 8 ads.

Hive is Facebook’s data warehouse, with 300 petabytes of data.

Facebook generates 4 new petabytes of data per day.

Facebook now sees 100 million hours of daily video watch time.

Users generate 4 million likes every minute.

More than 250 billion photos have been uploaded to Facebook.

This equates to 350 million photos per day.

Facebook marketing statistics

Facebook’s revenue from ad spend is 1.9x bigger in Q1 2019 compared to Q1 2017.

There are over 60 million active business Pages.

Over 2bn people can be reached through Facebook ads.

But only 6 million of those businesses pay to be ‘active advertisers’.

Although 75% of brands will pay to promote posts.

Facebook claimed 19% of the $70 billion spent on mobile advertising worldwide in 2015.

78% of Facebook advertising revenue comes from mobile ads.

Average advert click through rate on Facebook is 0.9%.

Although adding a CTA button can lift click-through-rate by 2.85 times.

In 2015, Facebook’s average advertising revenue per user was US$11.96.

49% of users like a Facebook page to support a brand they like.

40% of users don’t like any brand pages – meaning paid adverts are the only way to reach them.

Videos earn the highest rate of engagement, despite only making up 3% of content.

Mobile advertising represents 80% of Facebook’s advertising revenue.

Posts published on Thursday and Friday receive the highest engagement.