Shared content on Facebook surges fivefold from seven months ago

Facebook users are sharing five billion pieces of content a week, or five times as much as they were in July, according to new statistics the company released this month.

The big burst in sharing comes as Facebook has promoted share buttons and Connect, its effort to push a layer of social functionality across the web with partners like Digg and Hulu. As we’ve said before, Facebook is becoming more of a content portal in addition to serving as a social networking space.

After crossing the 400 million active user mark last week, the company has seen growth across the board for all types of content. Facebook users are also posting 60 million status updates a day or 50 percent more than they were in September. However, the overall percentage of Facebook’s user base posting status updates has actually fallen with 35 of the 400 million users publishing these per day. That’s unchanged from December, and only 5 million higher than the 30 million users posting status updates a day in July.

New photo uploads are at 3 billion per month, up from 1 billion in July. Growth may accelerate with Facebook’s new photo uploader, released on Friday. Events are unchanged from December at 3.5 million new ones each month.

Pages have also seen dramatic growth. There are nearly twice as many active Pages as Facebook reported in December when there were 1.6 million. A lot of that growth has come from local businesses, which accounted for 800,000 of those new pages. Twenty million people become fans of Facebook Pages each day, or up more than twofold since July.

With the exception of a few spots, Facebook is seeing growth across all kinds user-generated and professional content, meaning more valuable discovery, search and ad targeting.

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