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Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

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Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#171

Post by grandalf »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #128
atourgates wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at an agency that does a decent amount of digital PPC advertising. A year ago, we'd almost entirely steer our customers away from Facebook to PPC-search advertising. Back then, the campaigns we ran on Facebook were almost entirely wasted money. But today, Facebook has really improved their ad platform. They offer pretty much unparalleled user targeting features, coupled with some clever tools like product ads…

> I work at an agency that does a decent amount of digital PPC advertising. A year ago, we'd almost entirely steer our customers away from Facebook to PPC-search advertising. Back then, the campaigns we ran on Facebook were almost entirely wasted money. A year ago? You sure you don't mean like 3-4 years ago? 1-2 years ago Facebook advertising was also really awesome with a high ROI. Almost all the people I work with…

> I'm actually surprised to not hear about huge declines in AdWord spending (unless I missed it).

There have been some pretty big signals, the most significant of which has been the pricing of Google phones, tablets, chromebooks, etc.

Google found that simply selling high margin consumer electronics was a better investment than growing the user base and delivering a subsidized top-tier experience.

Thus Adwords faltering has left the door open for Apple to take over some of Google's former strongholds.

The cost of commodity storage tech and mature open source infrastructure means that Google's free cloud products compete mainly on the basis of features. Google's early lead and infrastructure advantage is no longer much of a factor, and Google's recent attempts at product have been (in my opinion) weak compared to Apple and even Microsoft.

The problem with Adwords is that pagerank-driven ad units end up being purchased only by the companies willing to blindly pay the most for the ads.

Since there are better ROI options out there, only the stupidest (or richest, thus already best-known and tolerant of the lowest yield) companies are the ones buying Adwords ads. Since Google has departed from its original low profile ads and moved into a dark pattern where sponsored content is commingled with actual results, this means that the quality of Google's content (when viewed simply as content) is declining.

Another big signal was YouTube Red. The ads got so bad that the only way Google could avoid destroying the platform was to bifurcate it, allowing the ads-present version to sell all the inventory to the poorest people who can't pay $10/month to stop the annoyance.

There are two kinds of marketers, those who need to care about ROI, and those who are expected to spend a percentage of their budget on the top few ad options. Google is now catering mainly to the second group, mainly because the second group is larger and cares little about ROI.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#172

Post by jdhn »

eganist wrote: post #158
jdhn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another crazy millennial here. I don't have an Instagram either, and frankly I don't want one. As for why HN hates Snap, I'm not exactly sure. Is it because the average user on HN is older and isn't targeted by Snap? Maybe it's seen as a frivolous plaything? No matter what the reason, there's definitely a lot of hate for Snap on this site.

My reasoning for loathing snap was their refusal to even allow a snap client for windows phone to exist.

There actually was an unofficial Snap client for Windows Phone for a time. I thought it was pretty good to be honest.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#173

Post by losteric »

skybrian wrote: post #151
losteric wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we could have an open social network that operates outside a single company... building on the foundational principles of the internet. These "social networks" exist because it's still too hard to setup and manage a personal website, and those sites lack the interactiveness of FB. Imagine if everyone had their own 1-click website with glorified RSS feeds, webrtc-based chat, access control, media sharing, and stan…

The biggest issue is what the rules are and how that affects the user interface. Using email, the rule is that if someone sends you something, you own it; they could ask you to do delete it, but you can refuse. Facebook and other social networks let you edit and delete posts. Snapchat became big because you can send pictures that are automatically deleted after you view them. Sure, you can reimplement basic message e…

I think RSS is a closer analogy than email, but anyway... it could be argued those rules don't really exist today.

Good snaps get stored and shared forever, everyone knows to screenshot dumb posts on FB, and there are plenty of twitter archival tools. Youtube's DRM and takedowns work OK against film pirates, but it's still easy to find many movies and redistributed personal content online.

Though I'd be curious what fraction of those instances are someone speaking without thinking, or accidentally sharing to a broader audience... the former seems PEBKAC and the latter is a solvable UX issue.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#174

Post by ghthor »

teirce wrote: post #142
chollida1 wrote: post #5

Some fun Facebook facts from the earnings call/report - Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. - Facebook's headcount is now at 20,658. That's up 43 percent since last year - Average Revenue Per User Rises 23% to $4.73, Down from 4Q 2016 -…

Maybe I'm just a crazy millennial, but I absolutely loathe the idea of FB / Insta stories. Snapchat going under wouldn't convince me to move over -- I'd just stop using the service and move on to communicating some other way. And Stories aren't the only appeal of SNAP, though I suppose they are a large producer of revenue. HN just loves to hate SNAP, and I can't really fathom why. I can get being skeptical but every…

Yeah, I don't get it either. As far as I'm concerned Snap is one of the most interesting startups recently because they started with as a software company that managed to actually make a Good consumer hardware item that I wear everyday. I love my Spectacles, I wasn't even a snapchat user before they released, but they are a slick device.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#175

Post by austenallred »

teirce wrote: post #142
chollida1 wrote: post #5

Some fun Facebook facts from the earnings call/report - Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. - Facebook's headcount is now at 20,658. That's up 43 percent since last year - Average Revenue Per User Rises 23% to $4.73, Down from 4Q 2016 -…

Maybe I'm just a crazy millennial, but I absolutely loathe the idea of FB / Insta stories. Snapchat going under wouldn't convince me to move over -- I'd just stop using the service and move on to communicating some other way. And Stories aren't the only appeal of SNAP, though I suppose they are a large producer of revenue. HN just loves to hate SNAP, and I can't really fathom why. I can get being skeptical but every…

I love Insta stories. It's an immersive way to see what your friends are up to. Just sit back and tap/swipe, takes 30 seconds, pretty passive.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#176

Post by ghthor »

jug wrote: post #65
fma wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprised. My wife started a local franchise that provides a service and I've been doing the Internet marketing. I ran local ads on Google...lots of clicks and cost lots of money...but no one came in saying they were referred by Google. Other owners I've talked to told me to use Facebook, it's more effective.

Google probably saw the writing on the wall, hence Google+...

This is pretty much it. Since Facebook controls the ENTIRE stack where the serve ads they can almost completely eliminate spam.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#177

Post by adventured »

encoderer wrote: post #167
adventured wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Twitter's problem is not monetization, it's cost vs scale. They managed to do $2.5 billion in sales with about 300 million monthly actives for 2016 (the 300m is wonky, I don't know what the avg was for the year etc, but they were near that anyway). If you scaled them to Facebook's size, they'd be at an equivalent $16.5 billion annually. Account for the benefits of scale that Facebook derives, and it's…

Great point. It's easy to judge twitter here, and by many different data points FB has been an exceptionally well run company, but engineers are a lot more expensive now than they were in 2010. I imagine Twitter has to pay interns today what Facebook was paying experienced engineers in 2010 (100% serious).

I definitely agree with the salary inflation. Here's another interesting contrast between them given that.

Twitter has roughly twice as many employees, versus what Facebook had at a comparable monthly active user count. It's costing them something in the neighborhood of $200 million per year to keep those employees.

Twitter's organization size was built up on the assumption of a much larger userbase that never materialized. Then their leadership chose not to adjust to the new reality (until perhaps recently, as they seem to be finally focusing on costs).

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#178

Post by allannienhuis »

lossolo wrote: post #139
adventured wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring debt: Microsoft ($126b), Apple ($256b), Facebook ($35b), Berkshire Hathaway (near $100b), Cisco ($68b), Google ($92b), Oracle ($66b), Softbank (a lot), Amgen ($38b), Ford ($40b), Samsung ($73b), Johnson & Johnson ($39b), GE ($82b) There are a lot of financial entities and the like that have more cash than that of course. It's held under a different financial context than the cash that eg Apple is sitting on.…

This is a problem, a lot of money that is not going back to the market. It's taken out of economy making it impossible to redistribute it again. It's not healthy.

as I understand it, that cash is not sitting in actual bills under mattresses, it's sitting in bank accounts of some sort or other (could be short-term notes perhaps and still qualify as 'cash'). Those banks in turn invest those funds (in loans, etc) to other people and businesses. So the money isn't completely taken out of the economy - it stays in the system and is put to work (by other people). So I'm not sure how it's an actual problem for the economy.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#179

Post by ptr_void »

chollida1 wrote: post #5

Some fun Facebook facts from the earnings call/report - Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. - Facebook's headcount is now at 20,658. That's up 43 percent since last year - Average Revenue Per User Rises 23% to $4.73, Down from 4Q 2016 -…

This makes me sad. I wish it was the case that the top companies have produced the most productivity/useful goods, not a messaging site with advertise that people use at their off times.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#180

Post by brandnewlow »

ptr_void wrote: post #179
chollida1 wrote: post #5

Some fun Facebook facts from the earnings call/report - Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. - Facebook's headcount is now at 20,658. That's up 43 percent since last year - Average Revenue Per User Rises 23% to $4.73, Down from 4Q 2016 -…

This makes me sad. I wish it was the case that the top companies have produced the most productivity/useful goods, not a messaging site with advertise that people use at their off times.

Facebook lets over a million companies get their products in front of people who are inclined to purchase them.

When those Facebook users do in fact click and make purchases it is often (not always) a profitable exchange for the companies advertising. Those companies take the revenue from the sales and use it to pay people to do other work for them. Wherever it is you work, they probably advertise on Facebook.

Creating a profitable revenue engine for a million companies is absurdly useful.

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