Facebook fetes billion-member mark with video

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Facebook on Thursday commemorated eclipsing the billion-member mark with the release of a video equating the social network with chairs letting people around the world sit together.
The 90-second promotional video clip by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu warmly compared Facebook to bridges, airplanes and doorbells as it focused on how the online community lets people share moments in life. “These are things people use to get together so they can open up and connect about ideas and music and other things that people share,” a woman’s voice said, while gatherings, both intimate and grand, played out on screen.
Facebook said Thursday it has more than a billion users, amid worries about how it would make money from the members increasingly tuning into the social network from mobile devices.
Co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement, saying the number is “humbling.”
“Celebrating a billion people is very special to me,” he added.
“For the first time in our history, we’ve made a brand video to express what our place is on this Earth.”
The video by the Oscar-nominated director of Spanish-language film “Amores perros” was meant to honor the everyday things created during human history to bring people together, according to the 28-year-old co-founder of Facebook.
“Chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges, games. These are all things that connect us,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post unveiling the video, which can be viewed online at facebook.com/facebook.
“And now Facebook is a part of this tradition of things that connect us too.”
Facebook planned to tailor versions of the film for a dozen languages.