According to news reports Facebook has reached a 500 million member (or user depending on which news site you read) milestone – quite a feat for a relative newcomer to the internet world (although six years is a long time on the internet) – but what does this figure really mean and does have half the billion members it claims?

As of 22nd July Facebook own statistcs press page is reporting more than 400 million users but only 50% log on to Facebook in any given day.

This is particularly interesting as the site claims to have increased its membership by around 100 million members in the last six months alone. Compare this with MySpace which has around 65 million users (as reported by the BBC) or nearly 70 million in the US (as reported on MySpace press room).

It is a curious figure as I suspect a number of people have multiple accounts, or unused accounts, on the Facebook service, for a number of different reasons, even though managing multiple accounts would constitute a violation of Facebook terms of service:

• To separate groups of friends
• To keep business interests away from social interests
• To reflect different social interests
• Forgotten other account details, trial accounts, or one-off memberships
• For marketing or promotional reasons
• Business based membership rather than personal membership
• Fake memberships for illicit purposes
• Accounts that are no longer used and have not been removed

I guess it depends on whether you consider a member as being an account that exists on the system or a unique individual? Presently, it is far too easy to create an account as all that is really needed is a valid email address and how difficult are they to get?

The extensibility of Facebook is one of it’s key features but one of the features that is sorely missing from social networking sites, but would make a huge difference, is a verified user feature – a safety and security module which clearly and positively identifies members as being who they say they are.

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