Social networking site Facebook has said it is having approximately 50
million duplicate accounts besides 22 million of misclassified and
undesirable accounts.
According to a Facebook's statement as on
December 31, 2012, it has 1.06 billion monthly active users (MAUs)
worldwide including 71 million in India.
"We estimate, for
example, that "duplicate" accounts (an account that a user maintains in
addition to his or her principal account) may have represented
approximately 5.0 percent of our worldwide MAUs as of December 31,
2012," Facebook said in its report to Securities and Exchange Commission
of USA.
Facebook said it identifies "false" accounts, by way of
dividing into two categories-- user-misclassified accounts, where users
have created personal profiles for a business, organisation, or
non-human entity such as a pet and undesirable accounts, which represent
user profiles that are determined as intended to be used for purposes
that violate the site's terms of service, such as spamming.
"As of
December 31, 2012, for example, we estimate user-misclassified accounts
may have represented approximately 1.3 percent of our worldwide MAUs
and undesirable accounts may have represented approximately 0.9 percent
of our worldwide MAUs," the report said.
Facebook said it
believes the percentage of accounts that are duplicate or false is
meaningfully lower in developed markets such as the US or Australia and
higher in developing markets such as Indonesia and Turkey.
"As
such, our estimation of duplicate or false accounts may not accurately
represent the actual number of such accounts. We are continually seeking
to improve our ability to identify duplicate or false accounts and
estimate the total number of such accounts, and such estimates may
change due to improvements or changes in our methodology," the report
added.
Facebook claimed to have 1.06 billion MAUs as of December 31, 2012, an increase of 25 percent from December 31, 2011.
"Users
in Brazil, India and Indonesia represented key sources of growth in
fiscal 2012 relative to the prior year," the report said.
"We had
67 million MAUs in Brazil as of December 31, 2012, an increase of 81 percent compared to the same period in 2011; 71 million MAUs in India as
of December 31, 2012, an increase of 54 percent compared to the same
period in 2011; 60 million MAUs in Indonesia as of December 31, 2012, an
increase of 25 percent compared to the same period in 2011, it added.
Additionally,
the site had 174 million MAUs in the US as of December 31, 2012, an
increase of 8 percent compared to the same period in 2011.