Facebook tops 250m mobile users and merges its mobile websites

m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com are now based on the same underlying code, but tweaked for devices.

More than 250 million people are now accessing Facebook from their mobile phones, the social network has announced. That represents rapid growth, since in February 2010 it passed the 100 million mark.

Alongside the new mobile milestone, Facebook has relaunched its mobile web presence, merging its two sites m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com. The former was for feature phones, while the latter was for touchscreen smartphones.

Now they will use the same framework, but Facebook will automatically serve the best version of the site for each device that visits it, according to what features they have or don't have.

"With the new m.facebook.com, users with high-end touch devices will see a rich touch-friendly interface; for users with feature phones, the site will look and work great," explains Facebook's Lee Byron in a blog post.

"Every device uses the same framework. This way we can move even faster and build new features just once for every mobile device. It also means that everyone can access the same features, whether writing messages or checking into Places."