San Francisco, (IINA) : Facebook said Tuesday it now counts two billion active monthly users, as the social giant’s founder Mark Zuckerberg highlighted his new mission — not just connecting people, but helping them find common ground, AFP reported.

“As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people!” Zuckerberg wrote in a post marking the milestone.

“We’re making progress connecting the world, and now let’s bring the world closer together,” he wrote. “It’s an honor to be on this journey with you.”

Facebook’s announcement came as it works to redefine its purpose, led by Zuckerberg who traveled the US this year to better understand what people want out of the social network.

“We realize that we need to do more too,” the 33-year-old said in a recent interview with CNN Tech.

“It’s important to give people a voice, to get a diversity of opinions out there, but on top of that, you also need to do this work of building common ground so that way we can all move forward together.”

The firm’s new mission statement says it seeks “to give people the power to build community.”

Founded in 2004, the social media behemoth hit the billion-user mark five years ago.

“These billion levels are significant milestones, and certainly it is a lot of people around the planet,” said analyst Brian Blau. “It goes to show the power of community, and how people are naturally drawn to each other.”

Among the biggest challenges it faces, Facebook is under pressure — along with other social media giants — to tackle the proliferation of hate speech and extremist content, trolls, and misinformation, while safeguarding freedom of expression.

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube announced on Monday the launch of an anti-terror partnership aimed at thwarting the spread of extremist content online.

Each of the technology giants has been working individually to prevent its platforms or services from being used to spread extremist views.

The “Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism” intends to share engineering, research, and knowledge to “continue to make our hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists,” the companies said.

Facebook this month launched a series of counterterrorism measures in the wake of attacks in Manchester and London.