Part of the source code of the highly popular social networking site Facebook was leaked onto the internet over the weekend, it has been reported.

The source code is a group of commands which control the physical appearance of the site when accessed by its users.

Facebook has blamed a misconfigured web server for the exposure of the code.

A spokesperson from Facebook told Computer World that the security of the website was not broken and that the leak "did not compromise user data in any way".

"Because the code that was released only powers the Facebook [user interface], it offers no useful insight into the inner workings of Facebook," the spokesperson added.

The source code was published on a blog called Facebook Secrets.

Launched on February 4th2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook currently has over 34 million registered users.

Facebook is based in Palo Alto, California, and generates revenue of approximately $50 million.