Modi to go live on Facebook with Zuckerberg

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit the Facebook headquarters in California on 27 September, where he will hold a town hall interaction with the social networking site's chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.

This will be only Zuckerberg's second meeting with a national leader after US President Barack Obama.

Making the announcement on his Facebook page, the Prime Minister invited questions for the session.

Modi's announcement came after Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook post: "I'm excited to announce that Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India will be visiting Facebook HQ later this month for a town hall Q&A. Prime Minister Modi and I will discuss how communities can work together to address social and economic challenges."

When Zuckerberg interacted with Obama in April 2011, just before his re-election as President. Facebook had roughly 500 million users globally. Today, it has 1.49 billion users. On 24 August, one billion people were on Facebook globally on a single day.

The Prime Minister will be on a visit to Ireland and the US from 23 to 29 September during which he will address the UN General Assembly and also visit the Google headquarters in Silicon Valley.

The Facebook CEO referred to his last meeting with Modi in India and said, "I had the chance to visit Prime Minister Modi in India last year and it's an honor to have the chance to host him here at Facebook."

Zuckerberg invited questions to be addressed to PM Modi. He said a video would be posted live on is profile which will also be visible on Modi's official page on Facebook.

In his response, Modi wrote on his Facebook post, "I thank Mr Mark Zuckerberg for the invite to visit the Facebook HQ. I look forward to the Townhall Q&A on Sunday 27th September at 10 PM IST (9:30 AM Pacific time). "

He added that "the interaction will cover a wide range of issues and will surely be a memorable one". Inviting questions, Modi said, "This programme will be incomplete without your participation! Share your questions on Facebook. I urge you all to share your questions on the 'Narendra Modi Mobile App.' Your questions will make this a programme to be remembered."

India has the largest Facebook user-base outside the US. In June, the company had said 125 million users of its global base of 1.44 billion come from India.