Facebook today announced its plans to establish a design team in its New York City office, which currently has about 150 employees mostly focused on sales, advertising and engineering.

Designers, of which Facebook currently has about 90, have traditionally worked from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Now in order to collaborate with the sales team and key clients on advertising products, a team of designers will begin working in New York. Having designers work more closely with stakeholders could lead to improvements for social marketers and advertisers. Today’s announcement shows Facebook’s increasing commitment to its ads business.

“We want to create advertising tools that help businesses use our platform effectively, while ensuring that advertising is complimentary to the Facebook experience for users,” a spokesperson said.

The expansion also creates more opportunities for Facebook to attract top talent that would prefer to be based in New York.

Facebook opened its New York office in 2009 primarily for sales and advertising teams who were connecting with top brands and agencies in the city.  At the end of 2011, the company expanded the office to include engineers. That team is now involved with Facebook’s daily code pushes.

Facebook today shared new stats on its user growth across the globe, including that it reached 1.01 billion monthly active users on Sept. 14. This is a 26 percent increase year-over-year. The social network also reports that 604 million people now access Facebook through mobile devices monthly.

The graph below shows how Facebook has grown across different geographies since its last earnings call in July. The social network has grown steadily across the board, even showing a 22 million user increase in Asia, especially as it continues to gain traction in Japan. For Japan, this is a reported 216 percent increase in the last year.

For daily active users, Facebook has grown steadily as well, going up 32 million users worldwide since the last earnings call. This is a 28 percent increase year-over-year. DAU increase has been driven by the increase in mobile users. In fact, personal computer usage has only grown modestly quarter-over-quarter.

The most impressive numbers come from Facebook’s mobile efforts as monthly active users on mobile has grown to 604 million, an increase of 61 percent year-over-year. In response to questions about the potential for Facebook’s mobile properties to be a strong source of revenue, the company shared that 14 percent of its ad revenue was generated from mobile.

In a press release, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “I’m also really happy that over 600 million people now share and connect on Facebook every month using mobile devices. People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform. At the same time, we are deeply integrating monetization into our product teams in order to build a stronger, more valuable company.”

Facebook has launched a program in India called Talktime, which gives 50 Rupees (almost $1) in calling credits to users who sign up for Facebook on their mobile devices. Users also get an additional 50 Rupees for every user they refer who signs up to Facebook with a mobile device.

An Inside Facebook reader first tipped us to a story about Talktime posted on Machine Happy. A Facebook spokesperson has since confirmed the program to TechCrunch with the following statment:

“We partner with a number of telecoms companies around the world, many of whom offer incentives for their customers to use Facebook, such as zero rating mobile Internet access to the service. This test is another such initiative.”

Facebook’s Talktime initiative in India is in line with the social network’s strategy in territories where most users are likely to access Facebook through their phones. The company says it had 59 million MAU in India in June, an increase of 84 percent compared to the same period in 2011.

Facebook Head of Mobile Partnerships Emily White said in June that 30 percent of users in India are now registering for the site through mobile phones. It’s likely these users are among those who never visit Facebook on desktop. Most are using the Facebook for Every Phone App, a native mobile app compatible with more than 3,600 different Java-enabled feature phones. An analysis using the Facebook ad tool suggests that about 35 percent of India’s active users are feature phone users and about 17 percent are smartphone or tablet users.

Facebook today announced that it has 1 billion monthly active users on the site and its mobile products.

“If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a statement about the milestone. “Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.”

Facebook says it reached 1 billion MAU on Sept. 14 at 12:45 p.m. Pacific time, but the company only shared the news today. Facebook says the top five countries where people connected from at the milestone were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the U.S., in alphabetical order. The social network also has 600 million mobile users.

The company shared some additional statistics about what having a billion users means for the social network:

• Over 1.13 trillion likes since launch in February 2009
• 140.3 billion friend connections
• 219 billion photos uploaded (as of Sept. 10, not including deleted photos)
• 17 billion location-tagged posts, including check-ins
• 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times
• The median age of the user is about 22

Facebook, which launched in February 2004, reached 25 million users in January 2006, 100 million in August 2008, and 500 million in July 2010.

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in an interview with Japan’s business daily The Nikkei that Facebook has reached 15 million active users in Japan, surpassing Japanese social network Mixi.

“Japan is a really important market for us,” Sandberg said. “We have over 15 million users…  Only six months ago, we were at 10 million users.” This marks a huge growth over the past year, increasing 200 percent from the reported 5 million users in September 2011. Sandberg also said that the company intends to increase its focus on Japan, and Facebook has also been listing Japan-specific roles for their Tokyo offices.

Mixi announced 14.53 million MAUs in June 2012, a drop from a reported 15.2 million users in February. Facebook has had difficulty penetrating the Japanese market and this marks the first time the company has surpassed Mixi’s MAU.

In January 2011 The New York Times reported that the number of Japanese Facebook users was under 2 million, or less than 2 percent of the country’s online population. According to the article, at the time Japanese users showed little interest in Facebook, citing that it was not optimized for the Japanese language and a reluctance to use real names and other information.

Clearly, Facebook strategy in the Japan resulted in great gains over the last year, and Mixi’s numbers may continue to fall as Facebook builds a larger audience in the country.

Image credit: www.serkantoto.com

Instagram has gained more than 50 million new users in the four and a half months since Facebook announced its plans to acquire the mobile photo-sharing network.

Although a Federal Trade Commission investigation delayed the deal from closing sooner, the commission voted earlier this week to end its review and allow the acquisition to proceed. Facebook hasn’t announced that the deal has officially closed, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg supposedly had a celebratory sushi dinner with co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger last night. Now, Facebook is getting an even stronger addition to its mobile app lineup with Instagram quickly gaining new users and increasing engagement, while also expanding its feature set.

In late July, Instagram announced that it had surpassed 80 million users and nearly four billion photos shared. AppData indicates that the app has 28 million monthly active Facebook-connected users and 10 million daily Facebook-connected users. That’s more than 20 million MAU and 8 million DAU since the social network announced its intent to buy Instagram. It also shows that larger percentage of Instagram users are connecting with Facebook and returning monthly. About 30 percent now versus 21 percent in April. See a breakdown of this over time at the end of this article.

Much of Instagram’s growth has likely come among Android users. Instagram released its first Android app less than a week before the Facebook deal was announced. The acquisition also raised the profile of the photo-sharing app, which led to a spike in downloads and monthly active Facebook-connected users. Monthly growth has steadied since June, though daily growth has accelerated since July, according to AppData. It was on June 25 that Instagram released an iOS update that made the app faster and allowed users to share more activity to Facebook, which seems to have resulted in users returning more frequently.

Instagram has also been increasing its web presence. In June, it expanded the functionality of its website to allow users to post comments and like photos. Previously, the site allowed users to manage their account settings and view a permalink of a photo, but not take any actions or browse user profiles.There have also been hints that full Instagram profiles could be coming to the web soon.

ComScore reported Thursday that Instagram experienced a 38 percent traffic gain between June and July, with unique visitors rising from 16.5 million to 22.7 million. Instagram was the top gaining web property in terms of percent change in unique visitors during that period.

Total Instagram users versus Facebook-connected users over time

• Instagram announces 5 million users on June 13, 2011
• 766,070 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~15 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

• Instagram announces 15 million users on Dec. 7, 2011
• 2.2 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~15 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

• Instagram announces 16 million users on Feb. 25
• 5 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~31 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

• The Next Web estimates 25 million Instagram users on March 3
• 5.3 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~21 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

• Instagram announces 30 million users on April 3
• 6.5 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~22 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

• ZDNet estimates 50 million Instagram users on May 1
• 16 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~32 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

• Instagram announces 80 million users on July 26
• 24.3 million monthly active Facebook users, according to AppData
• ~30 percent of Instagram users connected with Facebook

Facebook has added 14 new positions to its careers page this week, including a number of international-focused media solutions and Preferred Marketing Developer partner manager positions.

The company is also looking for a partner engineer to work with gaming companies to integrate Open Graph. A few developers, including Zynga, have been taking advantage of the platform that way, but there are thousands of games that have not switched to the new publishing format.

Facebook put up a new job listing for growth manager focused on Indonesia. The six- to 11-month contract position will “identify and monitor strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relevant for Facebook’s adoption in Indonesia” and “influence and improve the Facebook experience of users in Indonesia by identifying product/market fit gaps.”

New listings added to Facebook’s careers page:

• Manager, Data Infrastructure (Menlo Park)
• Manager, Site Reliability Operations (Menlo Park)
• Technology Partner, HR (Menlo Park)
• Email Writer – Contractor (Menlo Park)
• Partner Engineer – Open Graph (London)
• Growth Manager, Indonesia (Singapore)
• Associate, Media Solutions (Sydney)
• Team Lead, Media Solutions – France & Benelux (Dublin)
• Team Lead, Media Solutions – Germany (Dublin)
• Client Partner – Denmark (Stockholm)
• German Partner Manager, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Dublin)
• Spanish Partner Manager, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Dublin)
• Nordic Partner Manager, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Dublin)
• Manager, Custom Market Insights (Singapore)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook says 8.7 percent of its monthly active user total might violate terms of service and be either duplicate, miscategorized or “undesirable” accounts meant for spamming, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In its quarterly report, Facebook provided updated numbers and new details about illegitimate accounts, which could represent about 83 million users. The company estimates 4.8 percent of its 955 million monthly active users are duplicate accounts. For instance, a user may use one account for connecting with work acquaintances and another for family and close friends.

Facebook says 2.4 percent of accounts are likely miscategorized accounts where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization or pet. These entities should be represented on Facebook with pages, not profiles, according to the social network’s terms of service.

Facebook also estimates that 1.5 percent of monthly active users are “undesirable accounts,” which are false accounts that are created for spamming or other purposes that violate terms. Earlier this week, a music startup claimed that 80 percent of clicks on its Facebook ad campaign came from bots. Facebook says it is investigating the claims.

According to Facebook’s quarterly report, the percentage of accounts that are duplicate or false is significantly lower in developed markets such as the United States or Australia but higher in developing markets such as Indonesia and Turkey. The company says it creates these estimates based on an internal review of a limited sample of accounts. Reviewers identify names that appear to be fake and other behavior that appears inauthentic.

In March, Facebook estimated 5 to 6 percent of its 845 million monthly active users could be false or duplicate accounts. At that time, the company did not offer estimates about what percentage of these accounts were duplicate, miscategorized or otherwise undesirable.

Facebook revealed that 102 million users accessed Facebook solely through mobile devices in June, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

However, the 23 percent increase since March doesn’t necessarily mean that users are ditching desktop in favor of their iPhone or Android device. Facebook is growing rapidly in mobile-first areas like India and Indonesia, which have large bases of feature phone users. This is often overlooked when people consider Facebook’s growth and opportunity in mobile because so far the company has not offered a breakdown in the demographics of its mobile users. However, based on trends in feature phone usage and stats Facebook has previously shared, much of the social network’s mobile-only usage seems to be coming from emerging markets, though time spent on desktop is likely decreasing in favor of mobile within the U.S. and other developed markets.

Worldwide, Facebook’s mobile monthly active users increased 67 percent from 325 million in June 2011 to 543 million in June of this year. The company noted that mobile usage is growing in all regions, and it highlighted the U.S., India and Brazil as key sources of this growth, but it did not say where the mobile-only users are coming from.

However, last month Facebook Head of Mobile Partnerships Emily White shared that 30 percent of new users in India are registering for the site via mobile phones. It’s likely these users are among those who never visit Facebook on desktop. The company says it had 59 million MAUs in India in June, an increase of 84 percent compared to the same period in 2011. An analysis using the Facebook ad tool suggests that about 30 percent of India’s users are active feature phone users and about 10 percent are Android or iPhone users.

Other emerging markets are also driving the social network’s mobile-only growth. White said that 90 percent of users in Africa use mobile phones. According to the document Facebook filed Tuesday, the social network also saw a 24 percent increase in Indonesian users since June 2011. An analysis using the Facebook ad tool suggests that about 36 percent of users in Indonesia are active feature phone users and about 5 percent use iPhones or Android devices. Like in Africa and India, Indonesia is a region where many people are accessing the Internet for the first time through their phones.

In the U.S., Canada, Europe and other desktop-first areas, users are accessing Facebook from both personal computers and mobile devices. Overall, 441 million mobile MAUs accessed Facebook from both platforms in June. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that mobile-connected users are more active than desktop-only users. Specifically, mobile users are 20 percent more likely to use the service on any given day. However, even though these users are still accessing Facebook on desktop, the amount of time they spend on mobile is certainly increasing. The social network experienced a 2 percent decrease in the number of ads delivered in the U.S., despite 10 percent growth in daily users and upping the number of ads per page. CFO David Ebersman attributed this decline to increasing mobile usage and said the company is seeing similar trends in other developed markets.

Facebook reported that 58 million users were mobile-only in December 2011, and 83 million were mobile only in March 2012. The 102 million mobile-only users Facebook reported for June make up little over 10 percent of the social network’s total 955 million monthly active users. In December 2011, 13 percent of total users at the time were mobile-only.

Facebook’s earned an average $1.28 revenue per user in the second quarter of 2012, a nearly 6 percent increase over last quarter, but not even a 2 percent gain year over year. The company’s highest ARPU was in Q4 2011 when it brought in $1.38 per user.

U.S. and Canada revenue per user was back up to its Q4 2011 average of $3.20, but Europe and Asia are still below where they had been. Facebook attributes this to poor economic conditions in Europe and rapid growth in Asia where it hasn’t begun to monetize as well.

As expected, revenue cannot keep pace with user growth as the social network expands in developing countries and other areas where the company’s advertising and payments business is still weak. Facebook experienced 29 percent year-over-year growth in monthly active users, bringing its total to 955 million MAU. Executives noted that Brazil and Japan were among some of the fastest growing regions. These could be much more profitable in the future, as Facebook is actively working to improve its sales and business relations there. For instance, the company is hiring a SMB growth specialist, Japan and a director of online sales and operations, South and Latin America. Facebook also held a version of its fMC marketing conference in Tokyo in March.

However, in India, Indonesia and many African countries, where a larger percentage of users are on feature phones — and sometimes not on desktop at all — monetization will happen more slowly.