Facebook has confirmed that they hit 200 million users today which is a bit behind considering they should have hit 200 million over a week ago as we previously wrote. So why has Facebook decided to wait until now to announce the 200 million mark? My guess is that it was due to their communications department which didn’t want to reduce the amount of press coverage due to preemptive articles about the company’s growth.

Technically Facebook stated they had 200 million users back on March 27th during a Facebook Tech Talk. At this point Facebook appears to be less focused on the actual timing of numbers, instead choosing to focus on maximum coverage. Today Facebook also included some information about 16 charitable organizations that the company has partnered with to benefit from the purchase of gifts.

It’s a great milestone but I have a feeling that Facebook is understating their growth in order to maximize their press coverage. At this point Facebook should be at around 207 million users, but then again what’s 7 million when you’ve surpassed 200 million? Facebook has an undisclosed number of users that have interacted with a Facebook Connect enabled site.

While we estimate the number to be in the millions, current estimates have been skewed as Eric Eldon points out. Regardless of all the numbers, one thing that’s clear is that Facebook users have not gone running for the doors despite the new redesign suggesting that Facebook’s leadership position is firmly rooted.

Now that Facebook has confirmed the 200 million milestone we can focus on the more important things such as when they are releasing the updated API for Facebook public profiles (formerly “pages”).