Facebook has just reported its best earnings yet, with $10.3 billion to show in revenue for Q3 2017 and a 47 percent increase over last year. That’s also a $1 billion increase over Q2 2017 and represents a 49 percent year-over-year increase in revenue from advertising alone. Meanwhile, and perhaps unsurprisingly, with consideration for the number of improvements the company has brought to its Android app, 88-percent of the advertising revenue was drawn from the mobile side of the business. That figure is up 4 percent over the same timeframe for 2016. However, Mark Zuckerberg says profits are actually down because of an increase in spending on security to prevent abuse of the platform, as the company shifts its primary focus from advertising to what Zuckerberg calls bringing people together. Some of that spending likely stems from the ongoing efforts to combat the spread of fake news in light of concerns that Russian authorities may have used Facebook to impact last year’s U.S. Presidential election. According to the report, total costs and expenses for the company jumped 34 percent year-over-year to around $5.4 billion, though how much of that is being put into the new security efforts was not disclosed.
Despite those allegations, Facebook also reports that its user-base has grown substantially. After hitting 2 billion monthly active users last quarter, the company managed to add further users, rounding out Q3 with as many as 2.09 billion as of the end of September. The figure for daily active users, in the meantime, also hit 1.37 billion over that same time period. Both figures represent a 16 percent increase year-over-year. Growing with those figures, Facebook’s headcount is up 47 percent year-over-year, coming to 23,165.
With all of that said Facebook has not published any forward-looking statements or expectations for the rest of 2017 or the beginning of 2018. That is unsurprising as well, with consideration for the above-mentioned allegations and security spending. Those things could eventually have a financial impact on the company itself – stemming from user perception about the trustworthiness of the site. So it may make more sense for the company to hold off on posting those kinds of expectations until after it finalizes its congressional hearings and has a better understanding of how those circumstances will affect its position in the market.