Facebook has reported its fourth quarter results and in so doing has released some interesting statistics about its user base and growth trends.
Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said during the results conference call: "2012 was a big year for us. We made the big transition where now there are more people using Facebook on mobile everyday than on desktop."
According to the numbers, Facebook's total monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.06 billion, as of 31 December, showing an increase of 25% year-over-year (YoY). Daily active users (DAUs) also increased by 28% YoY, to 618 million.
By comparison, mobile MAUs were 680 million (a 57% YoY increase). "Mobile DAUs exceeded Web DAUs for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2012," says Facebook.
Zuckerberg said the rapid shift to mobile was "challenging" for the company to navigate. "We started off the year with apps that weren't as high-quality as we wanted and no ads in our apps at all. But now we're coming out of the year with a strong foundation and a lot of momentum."
Zuckerberg cited a recent Comscore report that said Facebook accounts for 23% of all time spent on apps in the US, while Instagram has 3%. "So put together we're now more than a quarter of the time spent in apps. Today, there's no argument. Facebook is a mobile company."
Monetisation
The results also showed mobile revenue now represents about 23% of Facebook's total advertising revenue. This figure is notably up from the 14% that was reported in the third quarter of 2012.
Zuckerberg noted that Facebook started 2012 without any ads on mobile, so it marks a major shift for the company. "One of the big drivers of this has been that as we rolled out ads news space, we found that it barely affected the level of engagement on Facebook. We thought that we could make this work over time without a big impact if we spent a long time tuning the ads, but the numbers turned out even better than we thought without much tuning.
"So this has enabled us to show people a few ads in news feed each day. So that means that now we have this news feed ad business that we barely tuned and there's a big opportunity in front of us to make every ad that we're showing a lot better. "
Referring to the opportunities mobile presents and the power of mobile platforms, Zuckerberg said: "It allows us to reach more people, there is more engagement from those people, and we'll be able to make more money from those users. Mobile creates a more dynamic ecosystem."
Mobile first
Apart from increased engagement, Zuckerberg says mobile also enables "many new experiences" and is growing overall sharing across apps. "This creates a very dynamic ecosystem and one where there's a lot of room for us to create even more sharing through Facebook.
"A lot of what we had to do last year was simply to improve our mobile development process. Now we're there. We moved fast and shipped new versions of our apps on a regular monthly cycle. You have a good version of all the Facebook features you know and want on your phone.
"The next thing we're going to do is get really good at building new mobile first experiences. That's going to be a big theme for us this year. If we do this well, we should be able to bring even more relevant contents and connections to more people and continue to deepen their engagement."
Share