Facebook Figures Were Wrong - 44 Million iOS Users, Not 104 Million
by Joe White
August 29, 2010
Not long ago, Facebook posted some pretty controversial figures regarding the number of users of its mobile app. We were told that, out of 150 million active Facebook users, 104 million of these were browsing on the service's popular iPhone application.
That was a rather wild figure, considering there were only 100 million iOS-powered devices in the world around the time of WWDC, and many tech sites as well as Apple fans alike were left scratching their heads.
Well, Facebook has been in touch with Engadget, and has updated its figures: there are actually 44 million active "Facebook for iPhone" users, not 104 million. Here's what Facebook said:
There are currently 44 million monthly active users of the Facebook for iPhone app. We recently changed the definition of mobile active users to exclude those who have only liked or commented on stream stories. Instead we are counting "active" users as people who have taken explicit actions within an application. This practice is more aligned with how we count overall active users for the site.Obviously, this is still an impressive figure. But, it's also more realistic. After all, the last figure pretty much claimed that every possible iOS-powered device out there was running Facebook on a regular basis, which clearly isn't the case. Personally, I check Facebook using Safari on my iPad, the lack of an iPad-optimized Facebook application is really starting to bug me. However, it also adds further incredulity to Facebook's original statement. Let's just hope the most recent revision to the figures is accurate, we'll be posting if any further changes are made!
