India overtakes US as Facebook's No. 1 user

San Francisco: India has overtaken the US to become Facebook`s largest country audience with a total 241 million active users, compared to 240 million in the US.

The change at the top of the platform`s country rankings comes just a few days after Facebook announced it has more than two billion monthly users around the world, a report in The Next Web on Thursday said.

The portal was quoting figures that the social media giant released to advertisers.

The figures indicate that active users in India were growing more than twice as fast as in the US.

"Active users in India are up 27 per cent in the past six months alone, compared to growth of 12 per cent in the US over the same period," the report added.

What was puzzling is that despite being the platform`s largest country audience, the social media penetration in India remained low, with just 19 per cent of its total population using Facebook in June. 

The figures also lay bare the Facebook`s gender imbalance in India as men still represent three-quarters of the active Facebook profiles. 

In contrast, in the US, 54 per cent of the platform`s active users were women.

More than half of India`s Facebook users were below the age of 25.