By: Azhar Azam
As a result of several updates sought to encourage interaction between the people instead of spending more time on passive public content – Facebook users worldwide consumed an estimated of 50 million fewer hours every day in 2017.
And also for the first time in the company’s history, the social media activities of the-most revenue generating North American daily users have fallen to 184 million for Q4-2017 as compared prior period.
CEO Mark Zukerberg of the world’s largest online social media and social networking company said while speaking at a fourth quarter and full-year 2017 results conference call on January 30.
Amid odd tiny tailbacks, the California-based Corporation yet is trotting a dream run as its scooped its revenue impressively by 47% or $13.0bn to mouthwatering $40.7bn for the year 2017 ended December 31.
The company truly revolutionized and dominated the social media and social networking industry within a brief spell of few years; levitating its operating income by $7.8bn at a stellar growth rate of over 62%.
FB common stock value has now dashed to $179.60 from just $23.56 on 16-November-2012. Its Market cap today has also cruised to 526.7bn from mere $41.6bn on 09-November-2012, according to Google Finance.
Ads purchased by the marketers which are appeared on mobile phones is the major source of revenue for the FB – accounting for about $40.0bn or more than 98% of the company’s total revenue for the twelve-month period.
Ad revenue from US & Canada region made up nearly half (49%) or $19.5bn of the total Facebook ad revenue way ahead of Europe (9.7bn), Asia-Pacific ($6.7bn), and Rest of World ($4.0bn) zones.
At the same time, daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs) horsed by14% each to 1.40 billion and 2.13 billion respectively at the close of 2017 – led by growth in the markets of India, Indonesia, and Brazil.
From largest to lowest, Asia-Pacific (499mn), Rest of World (441mn), Europe (277mn), and the United States and Canada (184mn) were the top regions in terms of daily active users on the virtual dais.
FB worldwide average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 20% to $20.21 – US & Canada ($84.41), Europe ($27.41), Asia-Pacific ($8.92), and Rest of World ($6.2) for 2017, the company notified in its Earnings Presentation.
The numbers for key metrics – daily active users (DAUs), monthly active users (MAUs), and average revenue per user (ARPU) do not generally include Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus – the other FB subsidiaries.
Recounting the history, FB was declined a merger offer in early 2004 for just $75 million by MySpace – the largest social networking company in the world then (2005 to 2008) – christening the deal expensive.
MySpace must be nostalgic to skip such a stifling opportunity to team up with FB which the impostors worldwide make 600,000 attempts every day to hack users’ accounts, access their messages, data, and other personal information.
FB may also remorse to turn down a job to WhatsApp co-owner, Brian Acton, in 2009 and five years later, was enforced to acquire the same company for $19 billion. It also bought Instagram for about $1 billion in 2012.
On the basis of MAUs worldwide, FB’s Facebook (2100 million) is the world #1 in social network and its Instagram (800 million) is place at #3 in the world. Google’s YouTube (1500 million) is the only challenge to FB.
In social networking apps, again FB’s Messenger and WhatsApp with 800 million MAUs each are contending for top spot. WeChat (938,000 MAUs) and QQChat (861,000 MAUs) are trailing the both FB’s affiliates by far.
Although FB is leading the outdoing everyone in MAUs however it is not the frontrunner in Alexa top-500 sites on the web. Google (#1) and its YouTube (#2) have loftier Alexa ranks than Facebook (#3) while China’s Baidu is at #4.
Incentives and Perks
FB is one of the few companies that offers paid paternity/maternity leave of 4-months to new fathers and mothers who work for it; 21-days paid vacations and unlimited sick leave are granted separately. It also pays $4,000 on baby-born and $3,000 in baby-sitting expenses a year.
Free meals are also provided to FB employees all day long ‘from burgers and fries to vegan options’. ‘The food is some of the best in the valley, and they are quite good about showing allergens and ingredients in food.’
100% paid health insurance, subsidized visits to doctors, bankers and barbers shops at FB campus, free dry cleaning, gym membership discount of $700 subsidy, free bike service/repair shops, regular ice cream socials, work from home on Wednesdays, and shuttle service to and from FB’s Menlo Park, California are some of the other perks company provides to its employees.
Non-executive staff gets an opportunity to have weekly Q&A sessions with CEO and other executives too. Mark Zuckerberg, the FB founder, takes homes just $1 on account of salary every year as chairman and chief executive officer of the Facebook Inc.
However, unlike traditional companies, FB and its peer companies are exposed to greater financial risks that could adversely affect its operations such as decrease in user engagement, inability to continue to increase user access, inability to maintain or increase marketer demand, changes to third-party policies that limit to deliver or target advertising on mobile devices, decisions by marketers, loss of advertising market to competitors, the degree to which the users cease or reduce the number of times they click on ads and many more.