Facebook Says Its New Focuses Are Personalized Content And Spreading The Internet
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WHAT'S NEXT FOR FACEBOOK? Listening to Facebook executives on yesterday's earnings call announcing fourth quarter results, two clear themes emerged: personalization, and global expansion. Let's take the latter first. Facebook executives announced 1.23 billion people in the world already use Facebook at least once a month. In some countries, penetration is above 80%. The only thing stopping Facebook from adding more users is terrible Internet and telecommunications infrastructure in many places. Facebook has poured time and money into improving that picture, both through the Internet.org project and investing in partnerships with mobile carriers. In terms of user experience, personalization will be the theme for 2014, according to Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg: "As we continue to leverage our understanding of people to make marketing more personal, and do it at massive scale, we will dramatically improve the quality of ads and drive more personal discovery."
ZUCK SAYS IT, FACEBOOK IS NOW A 'MOBILE BUSINESS': Facebook yesterday announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2013, including $1.25 billion in mobile ad revenue, 53% of the total. It has been obvious for some time that Facebook is becoming a mobile-first company, but it has never been stated quite as baldly as on yesterday's call. As CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it, "Overall, 2013 was an important year for us. If 2012 was the year we turned our core product into a mobile product, then 2013 was the year when we turned our business into a mobile business."
ENGAGEMENT GROWTH: The company has also thrown impressive stats up lately about the level of user activity on the site. Zuckerberg noted that 60% of Facebook's monthly users access the site on a daily basis, and that some engagement metrics continue to trend up. Here's Zuck again: "On the average day in December, we saw more than 6 billion likes. That’s up 59% from 3.8 billion likes a year ago." Our own research shows that brands on Facebook have also benefited from more engagement — 180% growth in shares, comments and likes over the course of 2013.
BUT, LIKE, DOES THAT MATTER? A "like" is not as valuable as a comment or share, and it may be of some concern that 82% of user engagement with brands on Facebook consists of likes, rather than comments or shares.
