• Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, May 18, 2010 1:51 PM

Back in April, Facebook quietly crossed the 500-million-visitor mark for the first time ever, comScore is now reporting. According to comScore, Facebook saw 519 million visitors world-wide -- in fourth place among all Web properties. Google had 921 million users, followed by Microsoft with 728 million, and Yahoo with 588 million. The data includes non-registered users who visit Facebook through public profile listings, "and thus can run a little bit ahead of Facebook's own numbers," notes The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog.

Facebook announced in February that it had 400 million active users. Meanwhile, All Facebook reported Monday that the top social net is planning to celebrate hitting the half-a-million milestone in late June. Despite a recent "backlash" over privacy issues, Experian Hitwise hasn't seen a drop in Facebook's growth. On the contrary, U.S. visits to Facebook have been growing by about 3% per week for the three weeks since it announced its new (arguably privacy compromising) features -- roughly on par with or ahead of weekly growth rates earlier this year, Digits notes.

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »