Facebook has just updated their statistics page which now reports they have 175 million users. This means Facebook has increased its new user acquisition rate from 450,000 users a day to over 480,000 users a day. As Facebook expands, it continues to increase its growth rate suggesting that the company will easily surpass 300 million by the end of the year if everything goes well.

Facebook’s growth rate has been increasing domestically as well as abroad. While some countries have experienced slower growth then others, it’s impressive to see the company continuing to perform so well as the largest global social network. Twitter in contrast, which has been receiving a ton of buzz today from their new $30 million financing round, is growing at a rapid rate but has less than 10 million users.

Facebook has been able to reach extremely high saturation levels in their top countries like Iceland where over 41 percent of the country’s population is now on Facebook. The United States in contrast has has a market saturation of around 14 percent suggesting a huge opportunity for domestic growth.
We will continue to track the growth of Facebook via this blog, and you can also keep tabs on their growth as well through our Facebook demographics tool.

Have you been receiving a lot more friend requests lately? Do you think the “25 things about me” thread on Facebook has helped push the company’s growth rate higher?