These are the insane numbers behind Facebook's community

How many people use Facebook?

Go on, have a guess.

No, 'Loads' isn't an acceptable answer. 

To coincide with the announcement of their Q4 earnings for the last financial year, Mark Zuckerberg (now the ninth richest man in the world) took to his Facebook page to tell his "community" just how well they were doing.

Here's how the wider Facebook family is getting on...

1.55 billion people use Facebook, with roughly a billion of them on the site every day. To give that some perspective, the nation of China has a total population 1.374 billion, while the Catholic Church has some 1.1 billion members. Facebook has more members than the world's largest country and largest branch of religion.

Some other astonishing numbers point to Facebook's monopolisation of free media messaging: they own the two largest messaging apps in Whatsapp (900 million monthly users) and Facebook Messenger (700 million monthly users).

With plans to connect more of the world to the web, launch an AI assistant and dominate the new world of VR with Oculus Rift, Facebook looks set to become an even bigger player in the world of the web than it already is.

Terrifying, right?