
Facebook Posts Strong Profit and Revenue Growth - kartD
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-posts-strong-profit-and-revenue-growth-1469650289
======
kilroy123
It has been said many times, that something else will come around, become more
popular, and overthrow facebook. I just don't see that happening now.

They're still doing well. They bought Instagram. (I think a very smart move.)
They'll eventually buy the next big thing.

I think Facebook is here to stay.

~~~
hacker_9
Facebook managed to beat out it's competitors to the top spot, and maintain
that spot long enough to the point where it has just become a constant in
people's minds now. Every other attempt to dethrone has been too technical
minded I think. There was that Diaspora that gave users privacy, only to find
people didn't care about that (the majority). Then there was Google+, who
again introduced a whole lot of lingo and looked complicated to use and why
bother? Everyone's on Facebook after all, and Google = Search, everything else
is just riff raff!

Once you stop talking to developers and programmers, you find that people
don't give a shit about things remotely technical, and just use stuff because
'everyone else is using it'.

Saying all that, these days my FB feed has gone advert mad, and I find I
mainly use it for event organisation instead. I do get the feeling it is
slowly dying though despite being profitable, but whether it will be replaced
by a new social networking site, or a set of separate apps with specific
functions instead, remains to be seen.

~~~
anonymousguy
> Everyone's on Facebook after all

I know of several people who choose to not waste their time with Facebook.
Seriously, why? Any time I need to nudge somebody, that I don't care enough to
bother with in the real world, there is Linked In. Everybody else either has
my phone number, email address, or they are people I don't know.

~~~
goldenkey
LinkedIn is a spammer paradise and a cancer for everybody else though.
LinkedIn is designed decently but just as full of spam and overflow as Myspace
was. Pretty much only worth using between jobs - but otherwise, I think there
are much better platforms. They've become all about upselling: "Buy our
premium membership and see the people who've seen your profile!" And they of
course, sell your data and viewing habits without care.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/09/03/has-
linked...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/09/03/has-linkedin-
crossed-an-ethical-line/#99b9d64468cc)

~~~
_bojan
Absolutely agree!

------
tedmiston
Through clicking the "web" link it's exciting to see Google AMP (Accelerated
Mobile Pages) [0] has support for this article. The WSJ paywall does not seem
to affect it.

The load time for me on average wifi was almost unnoticeable.

[0]: [https://www.ampproject.org/](https://www.ampproject.org/)

~~~
__derek__
AMP versions of articles are developed by publishers, not by Google, so it's
there thanks to WSJ. As for the paywall, the AMP access component[1] is not
stable, so WSJ's options were basically to skip AMP (and the associated
traffic) or to skip the paywall.

[1]:
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/extensions...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/extensions/amp-
access/amp-access.md)

~~~
nostromo
I see the paywall on WSJ's AMP:

[http://imgur.com/tg7PqBu](http://imgur.com/tg7PqBu)

Got this from this page:

[https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-
posts-strong-profit-and-revenue-growth-1469650289)

(You can't view it from desktop as they're doing browser detection and forward
you to the WSJ page.)

~~~
__derek__
Oh, good catch. I'm incorrect, and they are using the component.[1] I suppose
they just have the same policy for the carousel as for Google News.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/Jlu6JRX.png](http://i.imgur.com/Jlu6JRX.png)

------
niftich
Good for them. Lots of people spend lots of time on Facebook, so ads get a lot
of eyeballs, making them valuable. But I wonder what their clickthrough-rate
is. For some types of ads, that's obviously not the point, but I doubt it's
very high.

At first, I was curious how their drive towards more video, both user- and
professionally-produced, will mesh with their real name policy. But since they
allow 'pages' for public figures, businesses, content creators, and other more
abstract entities, they may be able to strike a happy medium where content
creators can broadcast under a well-known pseudonym, while content consumers
are all real people with real identities, targetable with ads. With this
setup, they can mount a true challenge against established video places like
Youtube and Twitch.

~~~
adotjdotr
Facebook (and Google) have the best ad products on the market without any
question.

I have so many DR clients printing money via FB ads, CTRs are not the metric
we even focus on, it is all about conversions or measurement studies to
support even investing in the platform. All my clients (big and small) love
the platform, ad formats and service level.

Great company, well deserved success.

~~~
continuations
> CTRs are not the metric we even focus on, it is all about conversions

If users don't even click on ads how do you measure conversions? Is it more a
case of brand advertising where you're not looking for directly measurable
sales?

~~~
coderholic
They do click on the ad, and then they buy something. The parent is saying
they don't care how many people click, they only care how many people buy (a
subset of those that click).

~~~
mattmaroon
All advertisers want to maximize ROI. Ad displayers want to maximize CPM. It's
a mistake to focus on one specific metric, because they all multiply to form
the actual metric you care about.

------
fiveoak
I'd be interested to know how much of that is from political spending during
this crazy election year.

------
samfisher83
I should have bought some facebook stock, but they are worth close to 400
billion dollars. Basically they are being forecasted to generate 20-30billion
a year in cashflow at that valuation. I could see them maybe doing that, but
its still a high valuation.

------
yueq
We tried some display ads (non-app installation) on facebook. Since it's
CPM+CPC model, our CTR was extremely low and caused CPC very expensive.

I guess they have huge PV so overall performance is high. I wonder what the
actual would ROI be for other publishers on FB.

~~~
yueq
Forgot to mention, our conversion was kinda low too. So eventually we gave up
ads on facebook. My friends who do mobile game publishing love facebook
though. Kinda varies by verticles.

------
encoderer
Their huge ad scale provides a very flexible revenue machine. I think when FB
misses a quarter it will be a big miss. Otherwise they can scale up ad units
and make millions in incremental revenue if they need to pad a quarter.

------
adventured
I still remember the very widespread arguments that were made before Facebook
was heavily monetizing their platform/s: that they would make more money by
charging subscription fees.

That turns out to have been false. They're getting $14.34 per year per user in
the US, up ~50% over last year. There's no scenario under which they could
match that with a subscription service (most people would never be willing to
pay).

They're averaging $3.84 per user worldwide, up 38% over last year. You can't
go around raising subscription fees by 40% or 50% per year on most of the
world, but you can optimize delivering them advertising. You can boost ad
rates by 50% without harming the user experience one bit.

The ad approach won again, easily.In Facebook it's going to end up producing
another eventual $20+ billion annual profit money printing juggernaut ala
Google. No subscription service in history has ever come close to
accomplishing that sort of outcome, none ever will.

------
Animats
From the article: _" The most lucrative ads are app-install ads and news feed
ads shown in Facebook’s mobile app."_

Interesting. Neither of those is "social".

------
dingaling
Current estimate of the population of China is 1.37 billion, and India 1.26
billion.

So does that mean Facebook is now the largest affiliated group of human beings
ever?

~~~
robotresearcher
Via nation state opt-ins we have larger groups of people like the United
Nations, Commonwealth (2.2B), OECD, NATO, etc.

On an personal opt-in basis, the Catholic Church has 1.27B now, so Facebook is
beating that. So yes, maybe Facebook has now become the largest single-org
individual opt-in in history. Anyone know of a competitor?

~~~
eru
How many people have a Google account? (Eg because of Android phone, or
gmail?)

~~~
dredmorbius
Upwards of 3 billion last I checked.

Up to 3.179 billion: [http://plus.miernicki.com/](http://plus.miernicki.com/)

Note that these are Google registrations, which include ... numerous things. I
suspect most are Android activations.

The data were the basis for my own estimates of G+ user activity -- only 9% of
the (then) 2.2 billion G+ profiles showed _any_ public activity, far fewer
than that if you were looking for activity in the past month.

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq)

------
icc97
Finally after about 10 years of using Facebook I was given a relevant ad last
week.

Admittedly I cunningly lie about my age in Facebook and say I was born in 1918
(but on the correct day/month for my half-friends who don't know the actual
date).

------
gigatexal
I can't remember the last time I clicked an ad on Facebook, but what I do
click on are sponsored articles that showcase apps or products that I am
interested in but not sidebar ads.

------
known
"Advertising on mobile devices accounted for 84% of Facebook’s $6.2 billion in
advertising sales in the latest quarter"

Proper Adblock on mobile devices will dilute their revenues :)

------
jgalt212
FB makes 70% of its ad revenue from mobile. Can someone please explain to me
the value prop of mobile ads? Doesn't the small screen size put a lid on how
much advertisers will bid for that space? After all, on web sites, the ad unit
size correlates with CPM price.

~~~
adjwilli
App installs.

~~~
jgalt212
thank you

------
vegardx
It would be amazing if they at least started looking at what types of ads they
are running. Some, if not even most, are completely against local regulation.
The rest are outright actual scams or some multi-level marketing schemes.

------
facepalm
So are people basically content, or do they still long for something more
free?

Has the believe in something Diaspora-like evaporated completely since they
screwed up?

------
roymurdock
How long before Facebook acquires Twitter out of pity?

~~~
MichaelGG
Would Twitter be a good fit for Facebook? Their stances on ID are fairly
different at the moment.

I'd expect Microsoft to buy them. It'd make more sense than LinkedIn, and
cheaper, too!

Note: TWTR dropped by 15% today.

------
dschiptsov
Which is a peak, because Facebook is neither new nor special even in the third
world.

------
perseusprime11
50 years from now, our kids wont remember Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it will be
Mark Zuckerburg sitting on a stage ready to release mosquitoes on to the
audience.

------
ilostmykeys
Facebook vs Death. OMG who's gonna win!!!??

------
aresant
EDIT - Whoops non-paywall didn't pick up - click top result:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit+and+Revenue+Growth&oq=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit+and+Revenue+Growth&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61j69i60j69i61j69i64&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit+and+Revenue+Growth&safe=active&tbm=nws)

~~~
detaro
That is _exactly_ the same link...

EDIT: and thanks for fixing it ;)

~~~
ronjouch
It's not; OP points to the direct wsj.com article (crippled with a _" To Read
the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In "_ banner if not subscribed), while
aresant to a search for the article on Google, and when coming with a Google
referer the full article is displayed. Thanks aresant.

~~~
detaro
It was when I commented, it just has been edited in the meantime.

------
caminante
non-paywall: [http://on.wsj.com/2ayjLKO](http://on.wsj.com/2ayjLKO)

------
downandout
Given the sheer volume of WSJ paywall links posted here, combined with the
significance of YC, surely someone at YC could call someone at WSJ and get
them to bypass the paywall when the referrer is HN. This is getting
ridiculous. I'm familiar with the "web" link but even that gets old when every
4th or 5th link goes to WSJ.

~~~
vintageseltzer
Not to be rude, but are you kidding?

HN has provided you with a workaround, WSJ has provided you with free content,
and that is not enough?

How about signing up for the WSJ?

~~~
downandout
_are you kidding?_

No. The volume of links to this one particular site with a very aggressive
paywall has been increasing. Further, HN administrators actually change links
pointing to alternative sites over to paywalled WSJ URLs when WSJ has the
story (I know, because it happened with a story I submitted).

 _WSJ has provided you with free content_

They're not ad supported?

 _How about signing up for the WSJ?_

I might consider it, if they weren't so obnoxious with the paywall, along with
inundating their pages with ads and completely blocking the loading of content
when using an ad blocker. I will not reward that type of behavior, and neither
should anyone else. I reported them to Google for cloaking a few weeks ago
because under certain circumstances, the paywall comes up even when clicking
over from Google (so, to your argument that "HN has provided [me] with a
workaround" \- that isn't always the case because they flagrantly violate
Google's anti-cloaking policy under certain circumstances, on top of
everything else).

~~~
coderdude
You're trolling, right? This is a parody or something.

> I will not reward that type of behavior

My mind is being blown. I'm completely feeding right now.

~~~
downandout
So everyone that doesn't share your opinion is trolling? No, I'm not. If you
want to pay WSJ for that type of behavior, you're certainly welcome to.

~~~
coderdude
Do not object to the WSJ paywall. I will not allow it. I will not stand for
this.

------
mrweasel
That's slightly annoying. I strongly believed that Facebook would never be
profitable. Guess I was wrong.

~~~
nulterm
Can someone tell me why this is being downvoted? Confession of a strongly held
false believe and updating on evidence saying otherwise is a good thing, isn't
it? Downvoting that seems weird to me.

~~~
dpark
Probably because he led with "That's slightly annoying." At a quick glance, it
looks like he's annoyed that Facebook is doing well (which would just be petty
and deserving of a downvote) as opposed to annoyed with himself for holding an
incorrect belief so strongly.

~~~
cloudjacker
downvoting that benign statement is petty.

