Facebook was another of the tech/media companies announcing its latest quarterly financial results yesterday. For all its political and regulatory difficulties, the social network continues to be a powerhouse of a business. Its revenues grew by 29% year-on-year to $17.65bn in the third quarter of 2019, helping Facebook to a $6.09bn net profit.
Other metrics are still growing too: daily active users are up 9% year-on-year to 1.62bn people; monthly active users are up 8% to 2.45bn people; and Facebook estimates that 2.2 billion people now use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and/or Messenger every day on average (and 2.8 billion use one or more of this family of products on a monthly basis).
Music wasn’t mentioned in Facebook’s earnings call with analysts, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg continuing to press the company’s case in terms of its societal role. “Today is certainly a historical moment of social tension and I view an important role of our company as defending free expression,” he said. “Now this has never been absolute and of course we take our responsibility to prevent harm very seriously too. I think we invest more in getting harmful content off our services than any other company in the world.”
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