Facebook defies social media gravity with user and profit growth

San Francisco

TO PARAPHRASE Isaac Newton's third law of motion, what goes up must, inevitably, come down. Now, try telling that to Facebook.

The social network on Wednesday reached the latest milestones in its quest to dominate the world, topping 1.79 billion monthly visitors as at the end of September, up 16 per cent from a year ago. Facebook also added a record number of new daily users and said for the first time that more than 1 billion people regularly used its network exclusively on their mobile device every month.