Dive Brief:
- Facebook released an impressive Q2 earnings report, with the company reporting 59% revenue growth over the last year, $6.44 billion in Q2 revenue, and 1.71 billion monthly active users.
- The company's growth is increasingly driven by mobile. Mobile makes up 84% of Facebook's advertising revenue, while the company now boasts 1 billion daily active mobile users.
- The company also revealed Facebook now sees 2 billion searches per day, an increase over the 1.5 billion searches reported one year ago.
Dive Insight:
A day after Twitter reported weak earnings with a bleak outlook, Facebook's Q2 report stands in sharp contrast to the microblogging platform's near disastrous announcement. While Facebook boasted 59% revenue growth over the last year, Twitter only grew 20% — a sharp downturn from the 60% year-over-year growth it reported in Q2 2015.
The two most impressive numbers from the earnings report were Facebook's mobile growth and its search figures. Facebook’s ad revenue is 84% mobile, following a clear trend toward mobile across all online advertising and echoing Google’s clear focus on mobile advertising.
The company's search numbers are also impressive — and once again, come into contrast with Twitter. While Twitter has long prided itself on users searching the platform during news events, it appears that users are increasingly using Facebook to do just that, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggesting that Facebook users are searching for what other users are saying on the platform. If Facebook users continue shifting their behavior to search for other users' posts during live events, it could reduce Twitter's value proposition even further.
Some of the news highlights from Facebook’s Q2 include an algorithm adjustment to emphasize posts from friends and family over brands and publishers, as well as a controversy that its curated news Trends were deliberately downplaying news from conservative outlets. Facebook also made major moves to bolster its Live streaming video feature by inking deals worth a total of $50 million with 140 media companies and celebrities for original content on Facebook Live, and giving Live Video prime real estate on the mobile app version of the platform.
Facebook's other properties also continue to do well and gain market share. Its messaging app Messenger joined Facebook’s other messaging app WhatsApp in hitting the one billion user benchmark, while Instagram reached 500 million users, passing social media competitor Twitter.
