Facebook reaches 1 billion active monthly users

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that his social networking service now has more than one billion active monthly users.

The announcement was made via a post to his official Facebook page on Thursday morning. He thanked users for giving him and his "little team the honor of serving you."

"Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life," Zuckerberg wrote. "I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too."

The Facebook CEO also sat down for an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC. There he revealed that the service added 200 million new users in the last year.

Zuckerberg also revealed that he was inspired by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in his managerial style and emphasis on user experience. For his part, Jobs was also said to have admired Zuckerberg, saying he had an "intuitive feel" for company needs and passion.

"He was just so focused, right?" Zuckerberg said. "I mean for him, the user experience was the main thing that mattered, the only thing that mattered, and I think there's a lot that every company can learn from that.

"We've had a lot of that philosophy too, which is we just want to stay maniacally focused on building the best product for those people, and I think that's the path to building a great business and, you know, I think that's something that Steve understood more than most."

An excerpt from Zuckerberg's interview with Lauer was released earlier this week, in which he revealed that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook sent him a free iPhone 5 as a goodwill gesture. The Facebook founder, however, noted that more people use Facebook on Android devices than on the iPhone, and Zuckerberg declined to say which mobile device he thinks is the best.