Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook last night to announce their quarterly results. This ‘Community Update’ shows the strength and unwavering popularity of the Facebook universe.
With 1.9 billion people on Facebook each month and a smaller, yet still impressive, 700 million on Instagram each month there is no doubt that Facebook still draws a huge crowd.
The numbers using messaging apps, What’s App and Messenger are impressive and continue to rise. This preference for private communication away from the public gaze is worrying for advertisers, as they haven’t yet been able to tap into private communication apps in any significant way.
Zuckerberg goes on to detail the future with emphasis on building a ‘meaningful’ community on Facebook:
“Our next focus is building community. More than 100 million people on Facebook are members of “very meaningful” groups – like parent support groups or illness support groups that are an important part of their lives. My hope is to help more than 1 billion people join very meaningful groups to strengthen our social fabric over the next few years.”
Zuckerberg goes on to show that he and his company have been listening to the current negativity around social media, with many saying that the like of Facebook and Twitter need to do more to stop fake news, trolling and hate speech.
“We have a lot more work to build a global community that works for everyone. I shared earlier today that we’re adding 3,000 people to our community operations team to review reported posts faster when someone needs help. We’re also continuing our work to spot false news, and enabling greater civic engagement by connecting people with their government representatives.”
Zuckerberg ends his post with a few lines on their move into augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) which they showcased at their recent F8 conference.
Are Facebook doing enough?
While it’s positive to see that Facebook are boosting the team who deal with hate posts and fake news, is it enough? As a father of two young children, cyberbullying is an area that really worries me – and there’s no doubt that it’s on the rise. I question whether Facebook should be investing more in this area, given the size of the global audience and the scale of the problem.
What does it mean for advertisers?
Facebook is still an incredibly powerful platform for advertisers. We continue to see our clients investing more in the platform and getting great results. Clients are continuing to shift budget away from traditional channels and focus on Facebook. The beauty of this for many clients is that they can realise a good return on investment for a comparatively small advertising spend.
With Facebook (and Google) now controling 20% of global adspend we are in no doubt that Facebook will continue to grow as one of the biggest media outlets in the world.