Facebook celebrates 'Friendship Day' on its 12th anniversary

Social networking giant Facebook on Thursday celebrated "Friendship Day" on its 12th anniversary by rolling out a special video.

The video titled "Friends Day Video" was launched as Facebook crossed 1.5 billion monthly active users and beat all revenue forecasts by posting a record fourth-quarter results for 2015.

Earlier, its CEO Mark Zurkerberg had urged Facebook users to celebrate its 12th anniversary as 'Friendship Day'. "On February 4, I hope you'll join me in celebrating #friendsday -- a moment to celebrate the friendships that have made a difference in your life," he had posted.

The acts of friendship, love and kindness we all share on Facebook are changing the world every day in ways we can't fully measure, he added.

"Sometimes they just make people in our lives feel a bit more loved. Sometimes friendship becomes a force that sets us on a different path in life. Sometimes friendship moves the world," the 31-year-old billianoire added.

It has 1.04 billion daily active users (DAUs) while mobile DAUs were 934 million on average for December 2015.

"Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.59 billion, an increase of 14 percent year-over-year and mobile MAUs were 1.44 billion, an increase of 21 percent year-over-year," the company said in a statement.

Over 80 million people use Facebook Lite for slow connections, up from 50 million. Nearly 500 million users are on Events, up from 450 million in July last year.

The social networking giant has 2.5 million advertisers and 50 million small businesses on Pages -- up from 45 million last quarter.

Facebook's gross revenue in the year 2015 stood at $17.93 billion, an increase of 44 percent year-over-year.

"(The year) 2015 was a great year for Facebook. Our community continued to grow and our business is thriving," Zuckerberg said.