Facebook now has one billion daily mobile users

Wednesday, 4 May 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Variety.com: Facebook’s growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down: The social network is now seeing more than one billion daily active users on mobile alone, Facebook CEO revealed.

That’s up even from March, when the social network had 989 million daily active users across its mobile apps and website on average. Every month, Facebook gets used by 1.51 billion users on mobile. Across desktop and mobile, Facebook attracts some 1.65 billion monthly and 1.09 billion daily active users, respectively.

Those numbers also helped Facebook break a recent streak of negative earnings results from major tech companies including Google/Alphabet, Apple and Twitter.

Facebook generated $ 5.4 billion in revenue in Q1, compared to $ 3.5 billion a year ago. On an adjusted basis, Facebook posted a net income of $ 1.5 billion, compared to $ 512 million during the same quarter last year. Not-adjusted earnings per share came in at $ 0.77, compared to $ 0.42 a year ago. Analysts had expected earnings of $ 0.62 per share, and revenue of $ 5.3 billion.

Armed with these results, Facebook proposed the creation of a new class of stock to investors Wednesday, which aims to keep CEO Mark Zuckerberg in control of the company while he uses some of his personal wealth tied up in Facebook stock for the recently-founded Chan-Zuckerberg initiative.

“While helping to connect the world will always be the most important thing I do, there are more global challenges that I feel a responsibility to help solve – like helping to cure all diseases by the end of this century, upgrading our education system so it’s personalised for each student, and protecting our environment from climate change,” Zuckerberg wrote in a note to investors.

During the company’s earnings call, Zuckerberg put a special emphasis on Live, the company’s live video streaming service. “Live is just one part of our overall video effort, but we think it has a lot of potential,” he said, adding the company’s goal was to push the envelope on video formats that are encouraging interaction with viewers. He also included 360-degree videos in this area, and said that Facebook was looking to eventually bring “more interactive forms of video” to its platform.