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FACEBOOOK’S PROFITS MORE than doubled in the final three months of 2016, as the social media platform saw its audience grow and head towards the two billion mark.
The big jump in income announced last night came despite controversy swirling around Facebook’s role in spreading fake news, and a Texas jury ordering the company to pay $500 million to a software firm that claims its virtual reality technology was stolen.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described virtual reality as one of the company’s important long-range investments.
In earnings that beat most forecasts, Facebook said it made a net profit of $3.7 billion on revenue of $8.6 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with profit of $1.6 billion on $5.6 billion in revenue in the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the number of people using the Facebook each month increased 17% to 1.86 billion.
The ranks of people logging into the world’s leading social network site from mobile devices each month grew to 1.74 billion, a 21% increase from the same period a year earlier.
Upwardly mobile
Income from ads on mobile devices accounted for about 84% of Facebook’s overall advertising revenue in the final quarter of last year.
Facebook saw strong growth in Asia, with India being a hot market. The social network site still hopes to get into China, where the service is banned.
“Our mission is to connect everyone in the world and it’s hard to do that over the long-term if we don’t find a way to serve the more than billion people who live in China,” Zuckerberg said while answering questions from analysts on an earnings call.
Baird research analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note to investors that “few companies share Facebook’s combination of scale, strong technology orientation, and platform breadth/diversity.”
Facebook shares jumped more than 2% in after-market trades, returning to 15 cents above the closing price of $133.23 after chief financial officer David Wehner told analysts that the social network has run out of spare room for ads and plans to invest “aggressively.”
Company priorities include data centers, virtual reality, search and artificial intelligence.
AI has the potential to help find videos or other content people might like on Facebook, and to recognise and remove posts that violate community standards, according to Zuckerberg.
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Hopefully the empire will come crashing down soon
The amount of fake accounts, especially over the last 2 months is staggering.
@Dick Durkin: You are right, I have nothing really against it, but its becoming cool not to be on it. I will close my account
I never entertained the thought of joining Facebook.
I’ll continue to ignore Facebook until they add a “who gives a fvck” button.
If you continue to ignore it then how will you know if they put that feature in place?
Two billion sheep are born.
Close your account, I really want to see if it goes to 1,999,999,999.99 ;)
@David Dickenson:
“Two billion sheep are born.”
Because nobody else uses a Twitter egg account solely to post on The Journal.
Why else would anybody have a Twitter or Facebook account? Is there another way to comment? Clown.
@David Dickenson:
“Is there another way to comment?”
Why do you feel you have to comment? What a sheep.
Lots of people have multiple accounts.. These are mainly old accounts that they didn’t go through the deletion process..
Wait for the “deleted my facebook account two months ago and it’s the best thing ever” post
Well i still have an account but haven’t used it in months. Pretty much feel the same as before
@Alan b..: Its a dying medium. Two many on it, and too much fake pictures and news
That’s a lot of idiots lol
How many of them are automated propoganda accounts by the Chinese/Russians/alt-right/{insert your bugbear here}?
@Damocles: And how many are Alex Falcone’s troll accounts!?
Credit where it’s due! Only around 13 years – and has more members than the Catholic Church, around for millennia.
OMG The scriptures were true, Christ son of God has returned and his name is Mark Zuckerberg. Amen.
Now we know why zuckerburgh stole from those other fellas. He knew what they had. They didn’t.
Is God??? Cause I’m sick of seeing people pray on Facebook. Braindead
My point is why doesn’t somebody start a social media site for normal rational people like me?
Fakebook?
Hahaha. Nice one Daffy.
I resemble that remark.
Alex, I would say Oscar’s remark about not wanting to join any club that would actually accept you could come into play.
Like
yup, mostly trolls
Except Me
@Dan Henry: I was the first person not to be on facebook.
Facebook has turned into a nasty monster lately. It’s a sort of digital virtual civil war or even ljke a traveller feud situation because of Trumpy and Brexit. Brothers and sisters against brothers and sisters, sons against fathers, daughters against mothers, cousins against cousins etc etc all killing each other verbally over something they are not involved in and cannot change. At least it’s not a knock and pistol at the door but instead the unfriending button. Then we have the stream of childish memes telling people the second coming of pure evil is upon us and pontificating about how superior intellectually they are because they support one side and everyone else is a moron. Then there’s the stream of the MSM delivering their fake news to condemn all other news as fake and you are is not to believe what we hear from the horse’s mouth. I got an apology from someone who said he unfriended me because he thought I was a Trump supporter and then realised I wasn’t. I reacted by saying that if they were the sort of person to unfriend me because of that level of carp the I should unfriend them. Hence I was caught in the whirlwind of hate and lunacy. Time to hit the ejector seat button.
I like facebook, it one of those things that helps to separate me form them.
*from.
Right now?
Should be called “Wastebook”
How many of these accounts are cloned mr zuckerberg ??????
have your say