Facebook earnings report shows slow user growth in 4Q 2017

Facebook has released its earnings report for the last three months of 2017.

The world’s most extensive social network enjoyed a 47 percent increase in revenue in the fourth quarter of last year compared with income recorded during the same period in 2016. However, the company suffered its slowest user growth in years.

Lesser time spent on the site noted

Also, Facebook users spent less time on the site, owing to changes introduced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg admitted that changes in Facebook’s New Feed caused a drop in the length of time of users on the network.

In a post, Zuckerberg said: “Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is well spent. In total, we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day.”

The 50 million hours is equivalent to “2.14 minutes per daily user per day, or five percent of total time spent on Facebook,” a TechCrunch report said.

User counts

Facebook reported that the site recorded 1.4 billion daily users in the last quarter of 2017. That figure is an increase of 2.18 percent, which is slower when compared to 3.8 percent recorded in the third quarter.

TechCrunch described the user growth as a “sizeable slow down, and the lowest quarter-over-quarter percentage daily user growth ever reported by the company.”

It’s a different scenario, however, with regard to Facebook’s monthly users. The site’s monthly user count is at 2.13 billion, up 3.39 percent from 2.06 billion in the third quarter.

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