Facebook users grow to 1.7bn a month as revenue exceeds expectations

Facebook is now used by more than 1.7 billion people every month, the company's latest financial results revealed.
 
The social media site, which was created by Mark Zuckerberg in his dormitory room at Harvard in 2004, also reported revenue for the last three months of 6.44 billion US dollars (£4.87bn) - a figure that exceeded analyst predictions by more than 400 million dollars (£303m).
 
It was a growth of 59% compared to the same period last year. "Our community and business had another good quarter," Mr Zuckerberg said of the results. "We're particularly pleased with our progress in video as we move towards a world where video is at the heart of all our services."
 
The social network has launched two major video features this year - 360 video, which enables viewers to look around videos as they play as though they are inside the scene they're watching, and Facebook Live which enables any Facebook user to broadcast video live to the world.
 
Facebook has also increased the functionality of its Messenger service, which passed one billion users earlier this year. Using artificial intelligence software known as chatbots that can understand and respond to human language, businesses are now able to use Messenger to communicate with customers.
 
The social network's advertising revenue has risen 63% in the last year, from 3.8 billion (£2.8bn) to 6.2 billion dollars (£4.6bn), partly because of these new interaction tools.
 
Mobile also continued to be a strong area for the social media site, with more than 90% of the site's users accessing it on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet, each month.
 
 
 

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