Facebook Now Has More than One Billion Active Users

Eight years after Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, the founder announced that as of Sept. 14, the social networking site reached over one billion users.

Zuckerburg announced the news on his Facebook page.

"This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month," he wrote in a status update. "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."

Zuckerberg said he is committed to working every day to make Facebook better for its users, and to hopefully be able to connect the rest of the world.

The company released a video to expressed what its place is on earth.

"Chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges, games. These are all things that connect us," Zuckerberg said. "And now Facebook is a part of this tradition of things that connect us too. Facebook isn't the first thing people have made to help us connect. We belong to a rich tradition of people making things that bring us together. We believe that the need to open up and connect is what makes us human. It's what brings us together. It's what brings meaning to our lives."

In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Businessweek's, Zuckerberg said his focus is not get to 2 billion but to make the site more mobile based.

"There are 5 billion people in the world who have phones, and a billion people using Facebook," he said. "There are actually already 600 million people using Facebook on phones, so that's growing really quickly. And as more phones become smartphones, it's just this massive opportunity."

The news of Facebook's growth comes nearly six months after the company went public and has not done so well in the stock market.

"The performance has obviously been disappointing," Zuckerberg said. "We care about all the investors and that's really important. And I think the only thing we can really do is focus on making the company worth as much as possible over the long term. I suppose there could be short-term things that we could do, but we're not going to focus on those; we're going to focus on the long-term stuff."

Facebook's stock gained 45 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $22.28 in premarket trading. The shares closed at $21.83 on Wednesday, off 43 percent from its $38 IPO price.