How Africa News
Facebook profits have leapt 186 percent from a year ago to $2 billion as the world’s biggest social network blasted past most analyst forecasts for the second quarter.
With its global base of monthly active users growing to 1.71 billion, Facebook saw a 59 percent jump in total revenues to $6.4 billion, mostly from online advertising.
Facebook shares jumped seven percent in after-hours trade on the stronger-than-expected results.
‘Our community and business had another good quarter,’ said Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
‘We’re particularly pleased with our progress in video as we move towards a world where video is at the heart of all our services.’
Facebook is one of the biggest beneficiaries as advertisers move money away from TV to the Internet and mobile platforms.
The company has been beefing up its presence in the mobile video market, where Snapchat and YouTube pose strong competition.
The company is also exhorting advertisers to experiment with Facebook Live, its recently launched live video product.
Facebook has been dominating the social media space as well as related online advertising as it seeks to diversify into areas such as messaging, virtual reality and other fields.
The research firm eMarketer estimates that Facebook is taking in two-thirds of social media ad revenues, dominating rivals such as Twitter, which this week reported disappointing results.
Zuckerberg also said Facebook is now seeing 2 billion searches per day of its 2.5 trillion posts, a 33% climb in just 9 months.
Total advertising revenue surged 63 percent to $6.24 billion, beating the average analyst estimate of $5.80 billion, according to market research firm FactSet StreetAccount.
Facebook still has several untapped areas for revenue opportunities, including its WhatsApp and Messenger apps, both of which have more than 1 billion users.
The social network has launched two major video features this year – 360 video, which enables viewers to look around videos as they play as though they are inside the scene they’re watching, and Facebook Live which enables any Facebook user to broadcast video live to the world.
Facebook has also increased the functionality of its Messenger service, which passed one billion users earlier this year.
Using artificial intelligence software known as chatbots that can understand and respond to human language, businesses are now able to use Messenger to communicate with customers.
But Wehner said the company does not plan to monetize them any time soon, and that it is instead focused on building interactions between businesses and users on the apps.
Facebook also owns picture-sharing app Instagram, which recently announced it has more than 500 million users.
Facebook has yet to say how much money Instagram makes, but research firm eMarketer predicts it will make $1.5 billion in revenue this year.
