Research archive for META

As we mentioned in previous newsletters, last week Facebook released numbers that demolished Wall Street expectations. Revenue came in at $26 billion, generating earnings of $3.30 per share thanks to average revenue per user coming in at $9.27. Wall Street was expecting $23 billion, $2.37 and $8.40, respectively.

The Pew Research Center did a survey to find out what social media platforms people use and how much time they spend on those platforms. The numbers prove that social media is a winner takes all business and Mark Zuckerberg comes up top.

People have their doubts about Facebook. The tech team at Axios (Ina Fried, Sara Fischer and Ashley Gold) did an in-depth investigation, and found that the business is really booming. Take a look at the chart below, which shows the regional growth over the last decade.

Facebook came out with earnings that comfortably beat the street's expectations , but this was overshadowed by management's tone about future earnings. The social media company said that the pandemic won't last forever, and changes to targeted online advertising could impact the company in the short-term as it adapts.

I'm highly annoyed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges against Facebook. In fact, I'm outraged. Maybe I should make a Blunders episode about this issue!?

Last week Facebook released third quarter results which comfortably beat expectations. In fact, this was the largest Dollar beat in their history. Revenues grew by $3.8bn to $21.2bn. Expectations were for $19.5bn. Earnings were also well ahead of expectations. They made $2.71 per share versus expectations of $1.90. This represented 28% growth form this quarter last year.

According to news reports, yesterday was Instagram's 10th birthday. In case you forgot, Instagram was acquired by the Facebook group just two years after it was founded. So it's been in the fold for the last eight years.

Facebook have teamed up with Ray-Ban to make smart glasses. You may feel like you have seen this movie before? That is because you have. A similar collaboration was announced between Google Glass and Luxottica (maker of Ray-Bans and many others) a few years ago. Unfortunately, Google Glasses never really took off and got scrapped.

Political activists have been moaning about Facebook, accusing them of not removing content on the platform that they find offensive. They also accuse the company of not doing enough to promote [insert your favourite cause here] or combat [insert the name of your best enemy here].

Facebook came out with its quarterly numbers yesterday after-market. They hammered expectations on both revenues and earnings, notwithstanding the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. The social media giant said user engagement increased, as measured by what they call family daily active people, which is the number of people who use one of their major apps every day.

WhatsApp is a beast. It is definitely the "social network" that I use the most. Some people may question it being a social network but if you think about, all your little groups are mini, private networks in your life that share loads of content, ideas, news and sometimes (mostly) utter garbage.

Facebook was founded 14 years ago in a dorm room of a Harvard student. Today it has over 2.5 billion active users. That is nearly half of all the adults on earth. The kind of power and influence of social media is unprecedented to the human race. We have never dealt with anything like this before and we are learning as we go. That applies to the regulators, the users and the social media organisations. What makes it even more complicated is that social media sites have no borders. This is a truly global phenomenon.

We recommend Facebook shares to holders of accounts with us in New York. Not everyone seems to love this company, as they do attract a bit of negative attention from time to time. Facebook users tend to be older and prone to circulating conspiracy theories. The site also carries a lot of political advertising, which gets people steamed up. Their other main platform is Instagram, which is full of attractive influencers getting up to no good. Mark Zuckerberg is controversial, and so on.

Facebook is coming in hot for online shopping. Adverts are by far their biggest revenue stream but it makes good sense for consumers to just buy the goods advertised straight through the platform.

​According to a report by Axios, Facebook is said to be buying the GIF-making and sharing platform Giphy for $400 million, with plans to integrate the GIF repository into Instagram and other apps that Facebook owns. Giphy is by far one of the biggest GIF repositories on the internet today which helps offer tools to create, share and remix GIFs.