Facebook passes 1 billion active monthly users

:: Facebook passes 1 billion active monthly users ::

Facebook passes 1 billion active monthly users-Tech_BY_Check

        The facebook social networking giant has now crossed 1 billion active monthly users. Facebook is the first social network to cross the 10-figure mark, indicating that one out of every seven individuals on the planet is using the service.

              Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) announced the big news in a letter today:

              "This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month.

If you're reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you.

             Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.

            I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too."

            With one billion active users, 600 million are accessing Facebook via mobile. The average user age is 22 and since its launch in 2004, the site has seen 1.13 trillion 'LIKES' with 219 billion photo uploads, 17 billion of which were location-tagged.

                Facebook had 955 million monthly active users, 543 million of which accessed the site via mobile, and 552 million daily active users on average as of June 2012. Facebook released a (Click SKIP AD) factsheet during the announcement which reveals a number of interesting statistics.

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:: ‘Nanoresonators’ Might Improve Cell Phone Performance ::

                                 Researchers have learned how to mass produce tiny mechanical devices that could help cell phone users avoid the nuisance of dropped calls and slow downloads. The devices are designed to ease congestion over the airwaves to improve the performance of cell phones and other portable devices.
                                 “There is not enough radio spectrum to account for everybody’s handheld portable device,” said Jeffrey Rhoads, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.

Nanoresonators

             This image from a scanningelectron microscope shows a tiny mechanical device, an electrostatically actuated nanoresonator, that might ease congestion over the airwaves to improve the performance of cell phones and other portable devices.

              The overcrowding results in dropped calls, busy signals, degraded call quality and slower downloads. To counter the problem, industry is trying to build systems that operate with more sharply defined channels so that more of them can fit within the available bandwidth.

                   “To do that you need more precise filters for cell phones and other radio devices, systems that reject noise and allow signals only near a given frequency to pass,” said Saeed Mohammadi, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who is working with Rhoads, doctoral student Hossein Pajouhi and other researchers.

                      The Purdue team has created devices called nanoelectromechanical resonators, which contain a tiny beam of silicon that vibrates when voltage is applied. Researchers have shown that the new devices are produced with a nearly 100 percent yield, meaning nearly all of the devices created on silicon wafers were found to function properly.
“We are not inventing a new technology, we are making them using a process that’s amenable to large-scale fabrication, which overcomes one of the biggest obstacles to the widespread commercial use of these devices,” Rhoads said.

                       Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing online in the journal IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology. The paper was written by doctoral students Lin Yu and Pajouhi, Rhoads, Mohammadi, and graduate student Molly Nelis.
Read more about Nanoresonators on the Purdue University press release.

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