How Many of Facebook's 955 Million Users Are Fake?

Facebook

has spent a great deal of time promoting the fact that it has more users than any other social network. Up until now, no one knew how many of those users were actually real.

The good news is that Facebook's own estimates, which come from

, are relatively positive. The company believes that it has 872 million

users (via

). This is a very impressive number. However, it also means that Facebook is overwhelmed with 83 million fake accounts, or 8.7 percent of total users. Facebook defines these fake accounts in a handful of ways:

For a company that claims to have 955 million members, the number of fake accounts is particularly depressing. The number is also much higher than that of fake users that Facebook estimated it had during the last quarter (40 to 50 million). Facebook has been struggling over the past two weeks. Since July 26, company shares have lost more than 45 percent of their value, dropping from $29.34 at market close on July 25 to $20.88 on August 1. Facebook fell another four percent this afternoon. Some investors and analysts worry that the company does not have an effective business model for

. Others wonder if the company is

. In June, comScore

attempted to prove that Facebook offered an efficient ad platform by releasing the

. At the same time, Ford

and Coca-Cola

for the social network. This week, however, it was revealed that as many as 80 percent of the clicks that advertisers receive on Facebook