500 million people are currently using Facebook. "As of this morning, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them," Facebook found Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post.

"This is an important milestone for all of you who have helped spread Facebook around the world."

Facebook also introduced an application that lets members of the online community "tell the incredible stories of the moving and interesting ways they've used Facebook."

Users can explore stories on a world map, or sort the stories by dozens of themes like "Love," "Family," Reunions," "Sports" and "College." Once they fill out the short form at the bottom and select a theme, users are able to share their story in the application and with their friends through News Feed.

Users can also "Like" their favorites and also share them with their Facebook friends. The more "Likes" a story receives, the more likely it is to be featured in an upcoming "Most Popular" section for more people to see.

As well as being available at http://stories.facebook.com/, Facebook Stories is also highlighted as a tab on the Facebook Pages of 31 partners. The partner Pages chose the default theme to show on their Facebook Stories tab based on the types of stories they want to highlight for their audience.

Facebook Stories was developed using the tools and resources of Facebook Platform, which are available to any developer.

Facebook added that a team from Facebook would be hitting the open road in the U.S. to meet the people, towns and organizations behind these stories in the company's first Facebook Stories road trip.

Users may ask Facebook's team to visit their town by giving a good reason for this, described on a story on Facebook Stories.