Isn't Facebook doing the same thing and reporting active users as people who use the like button or post comments through their commenting system on 3rd party sites?
At one of Zuck's recent press calls, he said that they had taken a conscious decision to dial down on user numbers and instead talk about the amount of content that people were sharing.
Clicking the Like button falls definitely into the "actively uses Facebook" slot, but commenting on 3rd party sites is indeed a gray area. But I'd be surprised if there is a lot of people who use Facebook only that way. Anyone has any numbers that could shine light on this?
Does it really? Does everyone that sees a Like button actually understand what it does? I suspect not, and that a bunch of people click it just because they like the site and thing it looks fun to press. The same logic would say that anyone who hits a +1 button next to a search result is a Google+ user, which is equally silly.
I agree that numbers would be good here: how many Likes (or +1's) are hit by users without other recent activity?
