Global social network Facebook, which began its India operations two years ago, now has 50 million users in India, according to Kirthiga Reddy, Director, Online Operations, Facebook India.  “We see that about half of the users return to the site every single day. The user numbers – eight million in 2010 and 50 million in 2012- tell the growth story. India is one of the countries with the largest number of active users,” she said to the media on the sidelines of an event organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.

“In the US, many have started using Facebook on a desktop and then moved to mobile. However, in India, a large part of the users have started access Facebook on mobile first and are not likely to go to a computer soon,” Reddy said. She further added that user content is available in Telugu, Kannada, Marathi and three other regional languages and more languages will be added soon, mainly with users pitching in for the translation.

On concerns about school going children getting hooked on social networking, she said Facebook, as a policy, did not allow kids below 13 years of age. Whenever there are such instances, it acted upon them strictly, she said adding that education initiatives were being launched for children as well as parents. “Facebook is like any other medium. When we were growing up, our parents used to tell how time we should spend watching TV. The same applies for internet too. It is about what you do with the medium,” she said.