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Zuckerberg: more than 1 billion people using Facebook actively each month
Active accounts have become one of the hottest currencies online, especially for social networks. Previous boasts by Facebook have been quickly shot down, but this latest number is pretty hard to ignore. According to Zuckerberg himself the site now has 1 billion active monthly users. That's right, one in seven people on the planet logs on to the social network at least once a full moon cycle. The announcement comes via the site's official news blog, which if the numbers are true, could mean most of you have read this already. Zuckerberg broke the news originally in a Q&A with Bloomberg Businessweek, also claiming that the site now has 600 million mobile users.
Netflix users clock-in more viewing hours than ever: over one billion in June
Despite all Netflix's misgivings up until early this year, the service has got its users watching more video than ever. CEO Reed Hastings recently took to Facebook to announce that subscribers have watched over one billion hours of content in a single month, for the "first time ever." As Tech Crunch points out, that's about one hour of video-viewing per day against the five hours that the regular ole tube garners. Hastings also mentioned he's excited about the service's exclusive rights to House of Cards and Arrested Development, declaring that they'll help to "blow these records away." If you'll recall, back in January the company claimed 26 million streaming subscribers worldwide, compared to just over 10 million who opted for discs -- it'll be very interesting to see how these fluctuate given its newer takes on content.
China claims one billion mobile phone users, India shrugs
China claimed 900 million mobile users last April, but back then it still seemed possible that India might reach the billion user milestone first. China was ahead in absolute terms, while India's user base was growing faster. According to the latest figures from its government, however, China is ready to stake its claim. It had 997 million phone owners by late February, with growth of around three million per week, which means it should have tipped the scales in the last few days. Of course, it's not really about who gets there first: The salient fact is that millions more humans can now ring each other up, just, you know, to chat.
Apple building server farm, secret lair in North Carolina
As Mike mentioned in the news roundup yesterday, word is going around that the corporate overlords at Apple are planning to build a massive server farm in the state of North Carolina within the next decade or so. How do we know? Because the company is working on getting a few nice tax breaks to go along with the deal, eventually worth about $46 million if Apple fulfills their end of the agreement. Their end of the agreement being a huge investment of a whopping $1 billion (that's over 333,000 Xserves, if that is indeed what they're installing -- and we bet not) into an economy that could probably use it. What exactly will go in there? We aren't sure -- lawmakers say the investment is worth it, and obviously Apple isn't showing their cards. [Note: the $1B investment figure is not an upfront number, but rather a total investment over the first 9 years of operation. –Ed.] But the facility, once up and running, will start by employing at least 100 people, so that's a nice start. Google has apparently gone through the same deal with North Carolina recently, though their deal was a little smaller: $600 million investment for a server farm that opened last year. More backend for Mobile Me? More power for the App Store or a project like it? A giant building full of Cubes running 24 hours a day? Or something we haven't even dreamt of yet?
Casio sells its one billionth calculator
Just as broadcast radio was turning one hundred, Casio was selling its one billionth calculator, as the company reportedly announced that this past December held the milestone purchase. The firm's first electronic calculator, dubbed the 001, hit the market in 1965, and played a big part in the development of the chip industry by generating demand for LSI chips. The pocket-sized renditions the company is so well known for started in 1972 with the Casio Mini, only to be followed by the graphing scientific version in 1985. These monochrome graphing editions will always hold a special spot in our hearts, as there was just nothing like kicking back during class and crushing your previous Tetris record while the instructor gave you kudos for focusing so intently on your work, and of course, that wasn't the only game to ever get ported to the small screen. So here's to Casio for hitting the big 1 billion, but we've got to admit, it looks like TI is the current champ in terms of universal acceptability, but we can't argue too much with a figure like that.
