Popular social networking site, Facebook has announced today that it has crossed the 12-million user base mark in India.

Facebook has been rapidly expanding its user base around the world and also in India. The site is set to soon overtake its rival and leader in the Indian market, Orkut in terms of number of users. Orkut is a leader in India and Brazil and has remained so for some time. However, Facebook is now consolidating its position and is growing much faster than its rival.

“Even as people continue to share their lives on the social networking site, the company has surpassed the 12-million user mark in India,” Facebook said in a statement.

The statement added that the users in the country uploaded 53 million photos in a month and mobile usage of the site increased nine times.

Facebook has also expanded its operations to India in March this year. The company has set up a campus in Hyderabad and is in the process of hiring 500 professionals. It already recruited Kirthiga Reddy as Director of Online Operations and Manoj Varghese as Director of User Operations.  

Globally Faebook has reached a whooping 500 million active users every day. If the site continues to grow at its current pace it would easily touch the 1 billion users mark in 2011. The founder and CEO said that it is sure that the site will reach the one billion mark however it is not known when.

Meanwhile, In order to mark the event, Facebook has asked its users to share stories about how the site has affected their lives and contribute them in a new feature called Facebook Stories. Users will be able to access Facebook Stories right in the app and the collection of stories can be accessed by using interactive map-based Location navigation or by clicking icons on Theme-based listing.