Look at Mark Zuckerberg. Look how smug and happy he looks. And he should be, because he's basically our new lord and master. Bow down to him people, because he controls you.
While Twitter continues to struggle, the behemoth that is Facebook rides like a juggernaut into the distance. The social network giant has released its most recent financial results which showed staggering levels of growth in all areas.
Facebook reported a 15 per cent year-on-year increase of monthly active users, up to 1.65bn people - that's 23 per cent of the world's entire population. Revenue for the quarter was up by £1.3bn year-on-year, from $3.5bn to $5.3bn - a huge 57 per cent rise.
The company's shares rose by 9.5 per cent following the announcement, rising to $118.39 - almost triple the value of its initial public offering four years ago.
They also revealed that mobile advertising was now dominant for their product, rising to 82 per cent of its revenue, up from 73 per cent at the same time last year - and this after the company has admitted in the past that it was initially slow to adapt to the rise in mobile browsing.
"We had a great start to the year," announced Facebook's founder and CEO Zuckerberg, adding the ominous comment: "We’re focused on our 10-year roadmap to give everyone in the world the power to share anything they want with anyone."
He also revealed that users were spending more than 50 minutes a day using Facebook, Messenger and Instagram - while it hasn't even begun to monetise Messenger or WhatsApp widely.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told Reuters, "The company consistently 'warns' about higher spending, but they consistently manage their spending to deliver earnings upside. They're an impressive company, and they leave very little room for criticism... I honestly don't think anyone cares if he [Zuckerberg] has more power, since he's done everything right since they went public."
That 10-year plan (twice as good as the Soviet's five-year ones, no doubt) includes embracing live video, virtual reality - including Oculus Rift, the platform bought by Facebook for $2bn two years ago - artificial intelligence and even devices such as solar-powered drones that provide internet signals to connect the world to the internet. You can read about them in full here.
All that technology just to get more people to like cat pictures.
[via Reuters]
(Image: Rex)
