Facebook in its quarterly earnings report has posted a profit of $4.7 billion – an increase of 79 per cent year-on-year and also announced that the social network now has 2.07 billion monthly active users on average for September 2017, an increase of 16 per cent year-over-year.
The company earned $10.3 billion in revenue and $1.59 GAAP actual earnings per share, compared to estimates of $9.84 billion in revenue and $1.28 EPS.
While the Facebook has been rising high on profits, the looming concerns over misuse of the platform is putting Facebook in a tough spot over Russian meddling. A day earlier, Facebook said as many as 126 million US users may have seen Russia-backed content over the last two years.
Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it attempted to influence the last US presidential election, in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. The social media company said about 80,000 posts published between June 2015 and August 2017 and were seen by about 29 million Americans directly.
“Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well. But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don't bring people closer together. We're serious about preventing abuse on our platforms,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.
"We're investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,” Zuckerberg added.
Daily active users were 1.37 billion on average for September 2017, an increase of 16 per cent year-over-year.
Revenue growth was 47 per cent year-over-year as compared to 59 per cent in the third quarter of 2016. Mobile as a percentage of Facebook’s ad revenue went up from 87 per cent to 88 per cent this quarter.
