It looks like the world’s biggest—and, at least for now, most powerful—social network will continue to grow its already massive audience in a time when the market is starting to get extremely competitive. Just this week, reports are showing that Facebook added enough members to hit 1.93 billion total users by the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2017.
Oddly, shares in the company were down by about 2 percent in after hours trading despite the fact that revenue grew by 49 percent over the course of the first three months of this year.
In its 2017 Q1 announcement, the social network announced that the results represent a breakthrough in that it is “no longer reporting non-GAAP expenses, income, tax rate, and earnings per share,” which might be the reason for much confusion among investors who have been evaluating the company’s most recent results as well as the whole of the company’s stock-based compensation.
Now, Facebook does not just go around spouting off how much money it makes from its Instagram venture, but some analysts argue that this number could be somewhere around $4 billion in ad revenue. Furthermore, some speculate that the ad revenue for Instagram this year is at least the same as last year (and probably more).
Wehner goes on to say that the company has planned, in the future, significantly higher spending. And it might accomplish through, for example, the hiring of new employees and the building of yet more data centers (and, of course, internet infrastructure projects). Wehner also makes sure to add that at least 1,700 new employees will [re] enter the work force in the first quarter alone.
Data centers are going to be integral for Facebook if they want to expand. The company’s latest data now suggests a vast need to more effectively switch from PCs to mobile.
AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi, for example, comments, “Everyone is already using their phones all day, there’s not a ton of new ad inventory [in the online platform].”
