Facebook reported that it made a huge sum in its first quarter earnings despite the challenges faced by the company.
Although the Cambridge Analytica scandal occurred in this same first quarter, it will take till the second quarter to discover the impact of the scandal on Facebook’s business. Furthermore, the company went through and survived a daily active user slump last year its US and Canada DAU number shrank to 184 million and marked the first time faceba00k has ever decreased the company’s primary market. The slump arose from Facebook’s fiddling with the News Feed to advocate meaningful interactions which according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was a long-term plan to improve the product and prevent widespread abuse from bad actors.
In the first quarter, Facebook added 49 million new daily active users for a total of 1.45 billion daily users, or a 3.5 percent increase in contrast to the previous quarter. The number of daily active users in the US and Canada also went back up to 185 million, after the historic downturn in the preceding quarter. The company posted revenue of $12 billion, which is a 50 percent increase annually compared to last year’s $8 billion. Those metrics beat analyst expectations, and Facebook’s stock is up almost seven percent in after-hours trading.
Zuckerberg and COO, Sheryl Sandberg both reassured the public that they would do better to ensure the privacy of user data after they recognized the harm done by Cambridge Analytica.
The CEO of the company opened up the earnings call by discussing the problems Facebook improved on such as fake news and “app developers and data privacy.” He said the company would work harder to “make sure those tools are used for good.” COO, Sheryl Sandberg added that “we have always built privacy into our ads,” and that with the new European data privacy rules set to be effected on May 25th plus the new policies launched by the company, users would be better protected against privacy violations.
