The number of Facebook accounts held in the UK has reached 30 million, around half the population of the country.

The milestone, an increase of four million from the number of registered UK users last July, was announced by the social networking site today.

Vice president of Facebook Europe Joanna Shields told a conference in London that the company was “really excited” about now having 30 million active users, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Facebook, which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, has more than 500 million active users around the world, meaning those users who have logged in during the past 30 days.

Half of the website’s users log in on any given day, with a total of more than 700 billion minutes spent a month on the site – the equivalent of 1.3 million years. The average user has 130 friends and will create 90 items of content every month.

The website employs more than 2,000 people and can even now claim to be Oscar-nominated, following the critical acclaim for The Social Network, a film about Facebook.

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