Facebook: 500 million reasons to be cheerful

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has hit the 500 million member mark, adding 100 million new users to its ranks in the past six months alone.

It's a remarkable achievement for a company that has had as many criticisms thrown at it as it has compliments.

For a web site that frequently gets drawn into privacy debates and discussions about errant hit men, and is run by a controversial chief executive in Mark Zuckerberg, on the surface it does not seem to be doing anything wrong at all.

As well as announcing its 500 million users, July also saw Facebook face a legal challenge over Zuckerberg's ownership of the site, a case that seems to have many twists.

When it was first suggested that businessman Paul Ceglia owned the lion's share of Facebook, the firm's PR team rubbished the very idea.

However, Ceglia has since claimed to have a signed piece of paper proving that he owns as much as 84 per cent of Facebook, since when Zuckerberg has been able to say only that he is " quite sure" this is not the case.

July also saw Facebook dragged into the gunman Raoul Moat's sphere of influence. A Facebook page describing him as "a legend" appeared on the site and was soon followed by copycats.

This, perhaps understandably, irked the UK government, and prime minister David Cameron said that he would speak to Facebook about the offending pages.

Facebook took the stance that it was not responsible for the problems, explaining that no one had asked it to remove the pages - at least no one important - and left them in place. This carried on through the week as time and again the firm was asked to explain itself.

"We believe that enabling people to have these different opinions and debate about a topic can help bring together lots of different views for a healthy discussion," ran the oft-repeated official word on the subject.

However, perhaps realising that the page was a step too far, its creator took it down themselves.