A digital market business in the UK has crunched the Facebook membership numbers and predicted the social network will surpass 1 billion members this year, barring a major downturn in popularity.

The last official update came at last year's f8 Facebook developer conference in September, when it was revealed that the network boasts 800 million active users, defined as users who have logged in during the previous 30 days. One in two of those 800 million log in on any given day.

iCrossing analyst Gregory Lyons says judging by other figures it seems Facebook membership is growing in a linear fashion, as opposed to the exponential rate it followed previously. On its current course, membership will reach 10 figures in August.

"Facebook's growth has slowed or stopped in many of its early adopting countries such as the US and the UK,” Lyons says.

"However, developing countries such as India and Brazil have shown strong growth with India growing from 22 million users to 36 million and Brazil going from 13 million to the 30 million in the last 9 months.

According to UN figures the world population is currently just over 7 billion, meaning by the end of this year one in seven people in the world will probably be on Facebook.