Facebook is now used by 30 million people in the UK, around half the population. Joanna Shields, vice president of Facebook Europe, made the announcement this morning at a media conference in London.
Globally, Facebook has more than 500 million registered （注册的） users, a milestone it hit last summer. Last July it had 26 million registered UK users. In the last eight months, it has attracted four million extra UK users, bringing the UK total to 30 million.
Facebook, the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg while he was still studying at Harvard University, was launched in February 2004. The pace of its global growth has sped rapidly - Facebook had only 150 million registered users in January 2009.
One third of women aged between 18 to 34 check Facebook when they first wake up, before even going to the toilet, according to the research. 21% check Facebook in the middle of the night, while 42% of the same group think it is fine to post drunken photos of themselves onto the social network, a study by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research found.
Shields was speaking this morning at the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference about the power Facebook’s referrals （好友推荐）can bring to media sites, such as newspapers and TV services. She explained that the average Facebook user has 130 friends who they share links to media sites with regularly. “Media companies which take advantage of that are really seeing the benefits,” Shields said. Shields refused to be drawn on whether Facebook would develop its own mobile phone operating system and also said it was “silly” that Google had recently disabled the feature which allowed Google users to refresh their contacts with Facebook friends.
小题1:Eight months ago the number of registered users of Facebook in UK was about ____.
A．less than half of its population
B．30 million
C．4 million
D．500 million小题2:Shields talked at the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conferences about the following EXCEPT ____.
A．Facebook’s referrals
B．its plan on developing its own mobile phone operating system
C．its dissatisfaction with Google
D．its call for more media sites to take advantage of Facebook小题3:What does the underlined word “disabled” mean in the last paragraph?
A．Invented
B．Strengthened
C．Added
D．Stopped小题4:What is the best title of the text?
A．Facebook’s referrals bring benefits
B．Facebook: the brainchild of Mark Zuckergerg
C．Facebook: used by half the UK population
D．Facebook: women’s preference