英國3千萬人用Facebook 佔總人口一半

Facebook is now used by 30 million people in the UK, approximately half the population, it said today。

Joanna Shields, vice president of Facebook Europe, made the announcement this morning at a media conference in London。

She said: “We can announce today that we have reached 30 million in the UK, which we are really excited about。”

Globally, Facebook has more than 500 million registered users, a milestone it hit last summer. Last July, it also revealed that it had 26 million registered UK users. In the last eight months, it has attracted four million extra UK users, bringing the UK total to 30 million。

Facebook, the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg while he was still studying at Harvard University, launched in February 2004. The pace of its global growth has accelerated rapidly - Facebook had only 150 million registered users in January 2009.

Last year, Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, said it was “almost a guarantee” that the site would hit one billion users, while speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He explained: “If we succeed [in innovating and remaining relevant] there is a good chance of bringing this [Facebook] to a billion will be interesting to see how it plays out。”

One third of women aged 18 to 34 check Facebook when they first wake up, before even going to the toilet, according to research. Twenty-one per cent of women aged between 18 to 34 check Facebook in the middle of the night, while 42 per cent of the same group think it is fine to post drunken photos of themselves onto the social network, a study by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research found。

Shields was speaking this morning at the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference about the power Facebook’s referrals can bring to media sites, such as newspapers and TV services。

She explained that the average Facebook user has 130 friends who they share links to media sites with on a regular basis. "Media companies which take advantage of that are really seeing the benefits", Shields said。

Shields refused to be drawn on whether Facebook would develop its own mobile phone operating system and also said it was “silly" that Google had recently disabled the feature which allowed Google users to sync their contacts with Facebook friends。Facebook今天宣稱，英國現在有三千萬人在使用Facebook，約佔總人口的一半。

Facebook歐洲總部副總裁喬安娜•希爾茲今天早上在倫敦的一個新聞釋出會宣佈了這個訊息。

她說：“今天我很高興地宣佈，我們在英國的使用者已達到了三千萬。”

去年夏天，Facebook實現了一個里程碑式的跨越：全球的註冊使用者達到5億。去年七月，Facebook釋出訊息稱它在英國有2600萬註冊使用者。在過去的八個月中，Facebook又吸引了400萬英國使用者加入，使英國使用者的總數達到三千萬。

Facebook是馬克•扎克伯格還在哈佛大學讀書時的一個成果，於2004年2月推出。自創辦以來，Facebook的使用者在逐年加速增長——2009年1月它的註冊使用者是1.5億。

去年，Facebook的創立者兼總裁扎克伯格在戛納國際廣告節上的講話中說，“幾乎可以肯定”該網站以後的使用者量將達到10億。他解釋說：“如果我們成功地進行創新，不斷推出有價值、有意義的點子，那麼Facebook的使用者量很有可能會超過10億。看著這一切成為現實肯定會非常有趣。”

一項由Oxygen Media公司和Lightspeed研究機構聯合進行的調查顯示，18歲到34歲的女性中，有三分之一的人早上起床的第一件事就是檢視Facebook，而不是上廁所；21%的人會在半夜檢視Facebook，而有42%的人可以接受將自己醉酒後的照片傳到這個社交網路上。

希爾茲今天早上在英國金融時報數字媒體和廣播會議上說到了Facebook的使用者推薦可以給報紙和電視服務等媒體網站帶來的影響。

她解釋說平均每個Facebook使用者有130個好友，他們可以經常分享各種網站的連結。希爾茲說：“利用Facebook這種影響力的媒體公司確實看到了收益。”

希爾茲拒絕透露Facebook是否會開發自己的手機作業系統。Google最近宣佈取消同步更新facebook好友清單的功能，對此希爾茲迴應說此舉“不明智”。