title: Facebook user_id : big_int, int or string?
body: <p>Facebook's user id's go up to 2^32 .. which by my count it 4294967296.</p>
  
  <p>mySQL's unsigned int's range is 0 to 4294967295 (which is 1 short - or my math is wrong)
  and its unsigned big int's range is 0 to 18446744073709551615</p>
  
  <p>int = 4 bytes, bigint = 8 bytes</p>
  
  <p>OR</p>
  
  <p>Do I store it as a string?</p>
  
  <p>varchar(10) = ? bytes</p>
  
  <p>How will it effect efficiency, I heard that mysql handle's numbers far better than strings (performance wise). So what do you guys recommend</p>