Facebook Has 1.15B Monthly Active Users, But How Many Are Invalid?

Facebook may have reported 1.15 billion monthly active users in its second-quarter earnings report Wednesday, but as of Dec. 31, 2012, approximately 5 percent of those may have been duplicate accounts, while 1.3 percent may have been accounts that were improperly classified by users, and 0.9 percent may have been fake accounts, according to the Form 10-Q the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday.

Facebook may have reported 1.15 billion monthly active users in its second-quarter earnings report Wednesday, but as of Dec. 31, 2012, approximately 5 percent of those may have been duplicate accounts, while 1.3 percent may have been accounts that were improperly classified by users, and 0.9 percent may have been fake accounts, according to the Form 10-Q the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday.

The social network offered more details on how it arrived at those estimates in its Form 10-Q quarterly report:

While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage of our products across large online and mobile populations around the world.

For example, there may be individuals who maintain one or more Facebook accounts in violation of our terms of service.

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