Social networking website Facebook has announced that it has registered 300 million users worldwide and is now making a profit.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of the social media phenomenon, said that the site started making money in the last quarter, despite predicting earlier this year that profits would be announced in 2010.
He suggested that this is important because "it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term".
In a message to the portal's users, Zuckerberg revealed how the company has plans to make connecting with people as easy and rewarding as possible.
As the firm looks to grow further it is also analysing ways to make the service faster and more efficient.
Offering an insight into the work of the website's engineering team, he noted that the ratio of people who are members of the site to engineers working on it means that every engineer is responsible for over one million users.
Earlier this month, Facebook launched a slimmed-down version of the site called Lite, which can be used by people with slow or poor internet connections.
It was originally planned that the service would be used predominantly in south-east Asian countries, but it has also received support in the western world.
