Facebook will hit 500 million users by June

All facebook reports that Facebook has “500 million user” celebrations plans in the works and that Facebook is expected to make an announcement in the next couple of weeks.

The site says it has “spoken with multiple sources” that have told it that plans are underway for the big 500 million user celebration bringing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg closer to his target of one billion users.

That is all pretty astounding considering it was in December that the site hit 350 million users.

The 500 million user mark will be crossed as Facebook hits its most challenging period which sees a storm whipped up around it surrounding issues of privacy.

The European Commission among others have slammed Facebook, accusing it of putting users’ privacy at risk, and calling changes to the site’s default setting “unacceptable”.

I’m convinced that Facebook will weather the privacy storm and continue along this tremendous path to growth.

Why do I think that? A couple of headlines spring to mind: 1) Facebook has 10m a day become fans; 2) 50,000 websites adopt Facebook ‘like’ button in one week.

I don’t know what the figure is, but I am guessing it has taken another leap. People are very excited about Facebook’s open graph as well and I really believe they are a lot more excited or interested in what Facebook is doing than they are angry about privacy issues, which clearly it should sort out to keep everyone happy and, you know, social – that’s the point, right?

I digress on these growth figures, which appear remarkably consistent of late, Facebook should hit around 650 million users by year end as it currently racks up 25 million or thereabouts a month.

To think that back in June of 2009 Facebook had just hit 250 million active users. It will have doubled in size in a year and become member of a very exclusive club with 500 million members.