Facebook is still the largest social network with over 1.06 billion people logging in every month. Remember that is not registered users who have created an account but people who do go and check their Facebook profile every 30 days.
Facebook has reached a saturation point in most developed and English speaking countries. This is because they have run out of people to connect to their network who are not already users.
This becomes more obvious when you look at the fact that 82% of their monthly active users come from outside the USA and Canada.
Growth for Facebook in the future will come from developing and non English speaking countries.
Facebook is a mobile company
The growth of smart phones has had a significant impact on Facebook. This led to Facebook making the acquisition of the mobile app company Instagram for a breathtaking $1 billion.
This came from the realisation that they needed mobile traction and fast.
The following statement from Mark Zuckerberg which precedes the latest announcement of Facebook’s fourth quarter and full financial year results, shows how important they consider mobile in their future.
“In 2012, we connected over a billion people and became a mobile company,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.”
It also led to the focus on development and launchof Facebook for Android 2.0, completely rebuilt to deliver improved stability and faster performance and opened Facebook Messenger to anyone with a telephone number.
What is also significant is that these latest figures show that mobile advertising is now 23% of advertising revenue which is up from 14% a year ago.
Facebook is making progress on mobile.
Significant moment
The web is driven by two major factors and they both start with an “S”
- Search
- Social
Facebook launched Graph Search Beta (a significant moment), a structured search tool that enables users for the first time to find people, places, photos and other content that has been shared on Facebook. This recent announcement is important because it puts Facebook on a collision course with Google.
Google with its Google+ platform launch is trying to become more social. Facebook with its launch of “Graph search” is wanting to make search more relevant for its social network users.
Both of these events will have significant impact on the evolution of the social web.
The Facts and Figures
- Monthly active users were 1.06 billion as of December 31, 2012, (an increase of 25% from last year)
- Daily active users were 618 million on average for December 2012, (an increase of 28% since 2011)
- Mobile monthly active users were 680 million as of December 31, 2012, (increase of 57% year-over-year)
- Mobile daily active users exceeded web users for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2012
- Mobile revenue represented approximately 23% of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2012, up from approximately 14% of advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2012
- Revenue for the fourth quarter totaled $1.585 billion, an increase of 40%, compared with $1.13 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011.
- Revenue from advertising was $1.33 billion, representing 84% of total revenue and a 41% increase from the same quarter last year.
- Payments and other fees revenue for the fourth quarter was $256 million.
- The music trivia game SongPop was the crowd favorite during 2012 (thankfully not Farmville), with social mobile games Dragon City and Bike Race coming in at second and third.
- The number of Facebook employees stood at 4,619 as of December 31, 2012
Source: Facebook
What About You?
Do any of these facts surprise you? What are other facts you would like to find out about Facebook?
Where do you think Facebook is heading and will it challenge Google in the future?
Look forward to your comments and feedback.
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