Facebook registers 200 million users

SAN FRANCISCO - Five years after it was founded in a Harvard dorm room, the online social networking site Facebook has registered its 200 millionth user, the site confirmed Thursday.

‘Growing rapidly to 200 million users is a really good start, but we’ve always known that in order for Facebook to help people represent everything that is happening in their world, everyone needs to have a voice,’ said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

‘This is why we are working hard to build a service that everyone, everywhere can use, whether they are a person, a company, a president or an organization working for change.’

The company is considered to be the largest social networking site on the Internet, dwarfing the 130 million members affiliated with rival site MySpace.com.

Facebook says that 100 million users visit the site every day, and users have an average of 120 ‘friends’ on their networks. The service is available in 40 languages, with 70 percent of its users outside the US.

Facebook is also one of the largest privately-held companies active on the internet and has reportedly repeatedly rebuffed buyout offers from web giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

In 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in the site in 2007 in return for a 1.6 percent equity stake in a deal that valued Facebook at approximately $15 billion.