Facebook: Strong Q4 data in 2017, challenges of “repairing” social network to be faced in 2018

FB's latest quarterly financial report allows us to continue to see the data style of this social giant. With the background of continued growth in revenue and users, FB is also ushering in a new turning point, which is what Zuckerberg said: "

"In 2018, we're focused on making FB not only fun to use, but also beneficial to people and society. We're doing this by encouraging more meaningful connections rather than passive consumption of content. Last quarter, we made changes to reduce viral videos to ensure people's time is spent meaningfully. Our changes have reduced FB usage by 50 million hours per day. We believe that by focusing on meaningful connections, our community and business will be stronger in the long term."

Revenue maintained rapid growth and profit margin remained high

In the fourth quarter of 2017, Facebook's revenue reached US$12.972 billion, a year-on-year increase of 47% and a month-on-month increase of 25.6%.

Although the number of daily active users in North America decreased slightly, revenue in various regions, including North America, continued to maintain high growth.

Operating profit reached US$7.352 billion, a year-on-year increase of 61%.

The operating profit margin continued to increase to 57%, mainly due to the decrease in the proportion of various costs and expenses.

The number of users continues to grow, with the number of monthly active users of Facebook reaching 2.129 billion and the number of daily active users reaching 1.4 billion.

Monthly active users increased by 14.5% year-on-year and 2.8% month-on-month to 2.129 billion, mainly due to the growth of users in India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. The growth of North American and European markets slowed down further due to their high penetration rates.

Daily active users reached 1.4 billion, up 14.2% year-on-year and 2.4% month-on-month. North American users decreased by about 1 million month-on-month, mainly due to product adjustments. The company does not expect daily active users to continue to decline, but growth will stagnate due to the high penetration rate.

After realizing the responsibility of benefiting the world, Facebook founder Zuckerberg made it a personal challenge to fully understand how users use FB's services, strive to amplify its good side and avoid negative effects. FB believes that one of the top priorities they can do is to ensure that FB's services are not only fun, but also benefit human welfare and society.

To this end, Facebook has made two major improvements. The first major update is to prioritize the display of meaningful social interaction content rather than passive content consumption. The second major update is to reduce false news and clickbait content on social networks, allowing users to see more trustworthy and high-quality content sources.

Other noteworthy data in the financial report include:

• There are currently more than 70 million small and medium-sized businesses using FB.
• The impact of FB's adjustment to the content algorithm in the fourth quarter was a 5% reduction in daily usage time for users, equivalent to a reduction of 50 million hours of usage time per day.
• Facebook's content review and security team has more than 14,000 people
• FB believes that stories will surpass information flow to become the mainstream of social networks. WhatsApp and Instagram are already among the top stories platforms in the world.
• More than 700 million people buy and sell products on Facebook Marketplace every month
• In messenger and WhatsApp, Facebook provides users with tools to communicate with businesses. FB provides messenger plug-ins for business websites, and the number of messages between users and businesses has reached 2 billion times per month
• Whatsapp currently has more than 1.5 billion monthly active users and sends 60 billion messages per day
• The number of monthly active advertisers on Instagram has reached 2 million, and the number of corporate accounts established on Instagram is 25 million.
• 300 million people use Instagram stories every day

via: 199IT Financial Report Data Center