The inconvenient truth about Facebook’s user numbers

Facebook is rightly coming in for criticism again after it was accused of claiming to have more users than actually exist.
In the UK, for example, it claims to have a “potential reach” of 7.8 million people aged between 18 and 24 in the UK. Yet official figures from the Office of National Statistics show there are only 5.8 million in the country.
And this is not the only place where it has happened. Analysts Pivotal Research revealed that in the US, Facebook claims to be able to reac