200 million users today

A website created in 2004 reached 200 million users today.

That's the size of America near enough!

A website has built an America in just five years.

Not bad going is it and, even though it's not a bank, this is as important to banking as the internet as it has become the home page for almost 200 million people.

The site is Facebook, as if you didn't know, and here's Mark Zuckenberg's note explaining what it means to them (a lot of share options I would have thought):

We will welcome our 200 millionth user to Facebook some time today, and
I want to take this opportunity to describe what this means to us and
what we hope it can mean for everyone using Facebook.

When we built Facebook in 2004, our goal was to create a richer, faster
way for people to share information about what was happening around
them. We thought that giving people better tools to communicate would
help them better understand the world, which would then give them even
greater power to change the world.

Creating channels between people who want to work together towards
change has always been one of the ways that social movements push the
world forward and make it better. Both U.S. President Barack Obama and
French President Nicholas Sarkozy have used Facebook as a way to
organize their supporters. From the protests against the Colombian
FARC, a 40-year old terrorist organization, to fighting oppressive,
fringe groups in India, people use Facebook as a platform to build
connections and organize action.

More broadly, technology has made it easier and faster for people
across the world to share more and more -- from the daily activities of
their lives to events that impact their communities. At Facebook, we
want to build the best service in the world for people to connect with
and share everything that is important to them, whether day-to-day or
world-changing. A heat map of our growth since 2004 shows how quickly people across the world are connecting on Facebook.

Growing rapidly to 200 million users is a really good start, but we've
always known that in order for Facebook to help people represent
everything that is happening in their world, everyone needs to have a
voice. This is why we are working hard to build a service that
everyone, everywhere can use, whether they are a person, a company, a
president or an organization working for change.

To celebrate and support all of these voices and their potential to improve the world, we are creating a space
on Facebook where people can share their stories about how Facebook has
helped them give back to their communities, effect change or connect
with a distant relative. We've also worked with 16 charitable and
advocacy organizations to create gifts that are now available in our gift shop.
The organization the gift represents will receive between 90 percent to
95 percent of the cost of the gift, after administrative expenses for
the transaction, so we encourage you to share your passion for a cause
with your friends and in doing so, support the cause. Facebook will not
keep any part of your contribution.

There are still many more people and groups in the world whose voices
we want to connect with everyone who wants to hear them. So even as we
celebrate the 200 millionth person and all of you using Facebook today,
we are working to bring the power of sharing to everyone in the world.