The social network that made a 20-something a billionaire, grew to be a mainstay of many people’s everyday lives, and became the subject of an award-winning film has now achieved something else.  Today, Facebook turned seven years old.

Indeed, the official version of events (as described by a Facebook "Info" page) indicates that Facebook was founded on February 4th, 2004.  And it’s somewhat impressive for any organization to have just survived so long, given the effects of competition and the recession.

But Facebook’s done far more than survive, and a new post on the Royal Pingdom blog (based on DoubleClick Ad Planner data) takes a stab at the latest user stats.  Two key points: "Facebook now has 600 million users worldwide, generating an estimated 770 billion page views each month."

Otherwise, the post stated, "The average Facebook user visits the site 40 times per month, spending an average of 23 minutes (23:20 to be precise) on each visit. . . .  Each user spends an average 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook in a month. . . .  Together, we spend a whopping 9.3 billion hours on Facebook in a month. That’s 1,065,449 years."

That’s not including Facebook’s mobile apps, either.

So this is by any yardstick a very happy birthday for Facebook.  Congrats to the team on what they’ve accomplished so far.