Facebook’s total revenue grew 49 per cent year-over-year to $8 billion, and advertising revenue was up 51 per cent to $7.9 billion in the first quarter of 2017.
In March, 1.28 billion people visited Facebook on an average day, up 18 per cent compared to last year. Over 1.94 billion people visited Facebook during the month of March 2017, an increase of 17 per cent year-over-year. “We started the year off with a good quarter. Our community continues to grow, with more than 1.9 billion people now using Facebook every month and almost 1.3 billion people using it every day. Our ads business is doing well too,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg reiterated the company’s push for augmented reality (AR) for its vision ahead. The company launched its Camera Effects features in Q1 2017. “This quarter we launched a set of new cameras. This is part of making the camera the first AR platform. We want to give developers the power to build all kinds of AR tools in the camera, so more people can experience augmented reality on their phone. Creating the first open camera platform is a huge step forward, and we are excited to keep pushing AR forward,” he added.
The company’s mobile advertising revenue was at $6.7 billion, up 58 per cent y-o-y. Explaining the growth factors, Dave Wehner, CFO, Facebook said,”In terms of regional advertising growth, rest-of-world and Asia-Pacific were our strongest growers in percentage terms at 66 per cent and 60 per cent respectively.”
Brand Buzz
New Partnerships Twitter signed new partnerships for live video for news, sports and entertainment. The partners include the likes of BuzzFeed, The Verge, Bloomberg, Viacom, MLB and NFL. Recently, the company posted its first quarter revenue of $548 million, down 8 per cent y-o-y. Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter said, “We are encouraged by the audience growth momentum in the first quarter. While we continue to face revenue headwinds, we believe executing our plan and growing our audience should result in positive revenue growth in the long term.”
Dig The Data
Drop In Trump’s Twitter EngagementThe first 100 days of President Donald J. Trump’s term have taken a toll on his Twitter numbers. According to the Washington, D.C.-based division of ad agency Huge, even though Trump’s Twitter account has seen a 40 per cent jump in followers, increasing from 20 million to 28 million since Inauguration Day, his engagement for @realDonaldTrump is slipping. In terms of retweets, replies and likes, the commander in chief’s engagement rate dropped by 66 per cent in the past three months, from about 206,000 per tweet to less than 71,000 for some of his recent messages.
LEADERNarendra Modi
@narendramodi
Prime Minister, India
“Successful launch of South Asian Satellite is a historic moment. It opens up new horizons of engagement.”
Paul Krugman
@paulkrugman
Nobel laureate
“Climate change is the rain; climate policy the umbrella. What do we know? Climate change could be really, truly, civilisationending bad”
