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Comment by hook | Hacker News Reader

Key difference: Facebook has 750 million active users. Google+ has 10 million users.

Funnily enough, all users on G+ could be considered 30 day actives and probably most of them 7 day actives by virtue of the fact that the service is so young :)

That’s not only funny, that’s also why said difference is currently meaningless. The ten million users are also active users. The interesting question will be whether they will still be in a month (or, alternatively, whether Google+ gains so many new users that a few million lost active users don’t matter).

I wouldn't call Facebook's 750 million users active users either.

They are. Facebook is absolutely telling the truth about this metric. 750 million active users in the last 30 days, 50% of that daily and 80% of 750mil weekly.

That does not mean 750 million individual humans, guaranteed.

Why not? Do you have insight into how Facebook calculates that number?

Are you serious?

MSN Messenger has >300 million users. QQ has three times that. Why do you find it so inconceivable that Facebook has 750 million active users?

I don't have time for the Socratic method.

Okay, I'll spell it out for you in capital letters:

NUMBER OF USER ACCOUNTS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS NUMBER OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONS. THE NUMBER OF USER ACCOUNTS IS ALWAYS HIGHER THAN NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS.

Did that help?

I don't mean to nitpick, I'm genuinely curious: how do you know Facebook is telling the truth about the figures?

I always assumed they were telling the truth because they're legally bound to (and because if they're caught lying, it would suck badly for them). I'm just wondering if you have any more info than that, since you seem so emphatic about it.

Facebook only reports 30-day active user numbers.

It's pretty hard to be a Google+ user at this point and not be considered "active" - unless you disregard signing up as activity. I suppose you could argue a lot of people are signing up and not using the service at all, but my anecdotal observation is entirely the opposite of that. The people who sign up are embracing it in a big way.

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