• The New York Times, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 12:18 PM

Soon to be a public company, Facebook can look forward to ever increasing levels of scrutiny. The New York Times, in fact, takes issue with the first page of Facebook’s stock prospectus, which claims 845 million “monthly active users.” Even more “astounding,” according to NYT, Facebook claims 483 million “daily active users.”

Regarding the “huge” numbers, NYT writes: “If it is hard to believe that so many people are clicking on facebook.com every day, that’s because well, they aren’t, exactly.” As Facebook explains on Page 44 of its prospectus, “active” users are those people who go to its Web site or mobile site, as well as those who “took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party Web site that is integrated with Facebook.”

So, every time a consumer clicks the “Like” button on ICanHasCheezburger.com, for instance, Facebook is counting them as an “active user.” Same goes for users who share music on Spotify with friends, and post comments on Facebook-connected Web sites like Huffington Post and TechCrunch. This is a problem from a marketing perspective. Writes NYT: “Facebook appears to be using the term ‘active’ as a euphemism for ‘engaged’ rather than how many users are actually going to its site every month.”

Read the whole story at The New York Times »