Facebook celebrates birthday as 'Friends Day', rolls out special video for users

California: As Facebook turns 12 on Thursday, it is celebrating its birthday in a unique way - 'Friends Day'.

On the occasion of its 12 anniversary, the social networking giant has released new tools such as Friends Day Video, Sticker Packs for its users.

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.

 Users can edit the content and then choose to publicly share these videos that are curated by Facebook’s algorithm.

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.

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.  

(With Agency inputs)