Facebook is now the size of two continents

By reaching the enviable 2 billion mark yesterday, Facebook has eclipsed the size of two continents combined.

The population of the entire continents of Africa (1.216 billion) and Europe (743.1 million) is a little above 1.9 billion people and one million less of the size of population.

By reaching 2 billion the social media network is also bigger than the population of any single country, and of six of the seven continents. Asia which is the only continent bigger than Facebook is 4.436 billion people representing more than half of the world’s population. Facebook on the hand represents more than a quarter of the world’s 7.5 billion people.

The social network had 1.94 billion people using its service monthly as of March 31, an increase of 17 percent from a year earlier. It reached 1 billion in October 2012. And year-over-year, daily active users in the same quarter increased by 18 percent to 1.28 billion.

Making the announcement on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg told his followers in a Facebook post “We’re making progress connecting the world, and now let’s bring the world closer together.”

Following the announcement, Facebook which has a market capitalisation of 432 billion dollars market capitalisation saw a marginal rise in share price to $153.31 on Tuesday evening before dropping to N152 billion on Wednesday morning.

The latest milestone comes few days after the company announced its new mission to “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” According to Mark Zuckerberg the new mission was “an extension” of the company’s original mission of making the world “more open and connected.”