Some people like to assess their popularity on the basis of the number of friends we have on Facebook. The site itself does that by seeing the total number of active users it has.
According to Dave Morin of Facebook, the site currently has 175 million users. This milestone was achieved last week on Friday February 13. 39 days ago the site had crossed the 150 million active users mark. According to some reports, the social network was getting 600,000 active users per day in the early part of December 2008. CNET Stories reports that the long term average was far lesser.

Between August 26 and November 3, the site was able to add 20 million users in 69 days; which comes to around 290,000 per day. This was followed by another 20 million users in a span of 45 days between November 3 and December 18. From December 18 to January 7, in 20 days, the site got another 10 million new entrants. Between January 7 and February 13, the site got 25 million new members in about 37 days, or over 675,000 new members per day.

The CNET Report also says that most of the growth recorded has been outside US because server power is costly abroad. Plenty of these global users produce lesser advertising income for Facebook than their US opposite numbers. Overall, the site is still fighting hard in the case of monetisation; its anticipated total valuation is $3.7B, reduced from $15B.