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Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

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

#201

Post by hoorayimhelping »

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…

Where did you see hate for SNAP? GP's comment said Facebook is killing it and speculated that SNAP has no chance against them.

Like 5/6 of the comment is an excellent summary of the call (on a story that is behind a paywall), and then a couple of sentences of opinion and speculation and from that you get HN hates SNAP? I don't get it.

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

#203

Post by majani »

ghthor wrote: post #176
jug wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also engagement for social media is second to none when you get it right.

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

#204

Post by aplummer »

jdhn wrote: post #172
eganist wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

6snap, also the same author as tinder and insta clones.

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

#205

Post by ingenuous2 »

adventured wrote: post #123
acchow wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can't discharge all of that cash without suffering severe consequences due to their need to sustain a high credit rating. What do you mean by this?

Microsoft for example has $76 billion in debt, accumulating at a rapid pace. Apple is in a similar situation. They're adding debt at a historic pace. Despite the immense profitability the companies have, their debt holders will get freaked out if those large cash piles were to get discharged down toward zero. For example, Berkshire Hathaway got slapped for allowing its cash to drop a bit low (relatively speaking) a n…

I am naive in this area, but if the creditors freak out, what does that mean? Seems like a "freak out" would mean higher interest rates, and when those rates cross the return from the cash stockpile, they just would stay paying down the debt more aggressively?

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

#207

Post by askafriend »

solomatov wrote: post #14
omot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absolutely insane. Should we seriously be considering anti-trust regulators to crack down on their insane growth?

As far as I understand, In the US monopoly is fine unless it leads to increase of price paid by consumers. EU probably has different opinion.

That's the issue here. Price as a proxy works in a world where manufactured goods account for a large portion of economic value being generated but not in this new unprecedented digital world where the value is intangible and the services are often free.

Networks are the new monopolies in this new world and Facebook has the largest and most engaged one which makes it damn near impossible for new incumbents to participate in the market. Just look at Snap.

The question is this: how many companies or products were not created or could not sustain due to Facebook's built in monopoly? And of those that were created, how many will thrive? And of those that can thrive, how many can afford to not to be bought by FB?

I don't have the answers, but I'm convinced that these are the right questions. Price as a proxy just doesn't seem to make sense in this context.

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

#208

Post by legolas2412 »

pm90 wrote: post #133
frandroid wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I appreciate nobody spends on elections quite like the USA The scale is nowhere close. Maybe if you include black money, India might be a contender, but how much of that is spent online?

> Maybe if you include black money, India might be a contender, but how much of that is spent online? Not much. And besides, I don't think you could spend it online even if you wanted to. Unless Facebook is accepting cash payments for ads in India ;-).

Your establish fake accounts and pay those IT cells

You pay influencers/fake news outlets/biased media sources.

Though, not much is probably spent in India this way, but it's definitely there

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

#209

Post by jordanb »

Eridrus wrote: post #100
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good one. I'm not sure how enforceable that would be, but in principle that'd be beneficial for competition. There are a multitude of problems, like privacy concerns and the fact that FB would have no incentive to keep the API very up to date or reliable, but I wonder if something like that could work.

I guess the Microsoft Office anti-trust rulings should be instructive here. Their monopoly is effectively broken in the sense that you can read Office documents in other software, but that hasn't really killed their business; though it did make the transition to Google Docs easier for me.

I'd argue that the monopoly action against Microsoft was an unqualified success, even if the consent decree ended up being weak tea.

Before the antitrust action Microsoft was knifing the baby and cutting off the air supply whenever anyone threatened their hegemony. Afterwards, a million little inroads were made that ended up making their monopoly irrelevant.

In fact the continued existence of Apple is a product of the antitrust action. Bill Gates struck the deal with Jobs in order to keep Apple alive as a "showcase competitor." If Gates didn't feel the need to keep up appearances he would have crushed Apple by ending the Office port.

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

#210

Post by bpicolo »

benjaminbuttons wrote: post #206

Anyone please explain what is the utility of FB. The newsfeed quality is terrible, with lots of spam and inaccurate content. I stopped using FB a while back, I don't get why a Billion people are still hooked on to this social media trap.

It's all just 'news' (and by that I mean random memes and videos) I never wanted now. "Things people liked" is a massively spammy medium for content.
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