Facebook, the world’s biggest social media network, has announced that it now has over 1 billion active users. The social media site reaches one in seven people on our planet. Over 600 million of them connect through mobile phones. Launched in 2004, Facebook is responsible for 1.13 trillion “Likes” and over 17 billion uploaded photos.

On his personal Facebook page, founder Mark Zuckerberg said he is proud of what the company has achieved in such a short time and feels good about giving so many people a new form of getting together. 

Zuckerberg plans to expand Facebook to those areas of the world where the social media site is currently not yet dominant, like China or Russia, where local social media sites have a higher ranking. Only recently, Zuckerberg travelled to Russia where Facebook has only about seven million users.

In many African countries, Facebook has a simplified version which can be displayed on basic mobile phones that have no internet access. Many people, especially in rural areas, ask for such phones “with Facebook on them”.

In contrast, Facebook growth has been slowing down in Europe and North America. Here, Zuckerberg wants to expand advertising on by using the personal data of each of its members. This could cause protests as especially European users are skeptical of Facebook’s privacy guidelines.

The company’s main income sources are advertising and other non-standard features like social games. Users in the United States and Canada make up over 50% of the company’s income. The California-based company worries that, as more and more people connect via mobile phone, ads will not be clicked on as often as on desktop computers or laptops. Facebook is looking for more ways to make money. It is becoming a platform for other apps.

Zuckerberg also wants to help Facebook get a better image after the stock market disaster last May. The company suffered a financial loss when its share prices started out at $38 and then dropped to almost half.

Huawei is a multinational company that makes  telecommunications  parts for  mobile phones , network equipment  and other high-tech  devices . It is the second largest such company in the world. Huawei has its headquarters  in Shenzhen, which became China’s first special economic zone  in 1979.

The Chinese technology company, which was founded  about 20 years ago, has over 100,000 workers in all parts of the world, more than Microsoft.  Most of the company is owned by its  employees .

Huawei started out in the rural  areas in China. In those days most of the telecom contracts  went to  state-owned  Chinese or  foreign  firms. As the company grew, it  took hold of urban markets in big Chinese cities and in 1997 it  expanded  to other countries.

Today, Huawei is the second biggest manufacturer  of telecom  equipment , after Ericsson. In 2011,  annual  sales  is expected to be about $12 billion dollars and  likely to get three times as high within the next ten years.

Although   Huawei has been concentrating  on making telecom parts and whole networks, the company is also looking into other industries in an  attempt  to diversify and grow. At Shenzhen  engineers  are experimenting on new forms of video conferencing, abranch  that is expanding rapidly  The Chinese hi-tech giant  is also starting to produce  cloud-based  hardware and computers that work  out of the box .

Even though Huawei is one of the world leaders in producing mobile phone parts it is also pushing into the consumer market with its own  brand  of computers, tablets and smartphones .

So far Huawei has failed  to reach  the American market because of security  reasons. The American  government  thinks it hasconnections  with the Chinese  military and is afraid it will spy  on the American  public .