Social networking giant Facebook now has 500 million registered users, just six years after it launched back in 2004. The news is all over the press at the moment, but we’ve pulled together a few key facts from across the headlines…

• The UK currently has around 26 million Facebook users

• The site has dramatically overtaken competitors such as MySpace and Bebo. Up to 2008, MySpace was in the lead, until Facebook rapidly overtook. MySpace now currently has around 65 million unique users. Bebo was also sold by AOL last month.

• If Facebook were a country, it would have the third largest population in the world.

• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site.

• An average user has 130 friends.

• Twitter seems to be the only site that could possibly rival Facebook. Although its difficult to track its users as many use the service through means other than the website, its estimated to have around 200 million.

• One in 14 people around the globe uses Facebook.

• More than 30 billion pieces of content, like photos, web links and news stories, are shared each month.

• It took five months for Facebook to attract an extra 100 million users, from 400 million to 500 million.

• Last January Facebook only had 150 million members.

• The site has yet to become the leading social network in Russia, China, Japan or Korea.

• Facebook was valued at $11.5 billion according to Sharespost’s March 2010 Index.

Facebook's chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg