Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

investor.fb.com

161–170 of 271 posts

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you don't work in advertising, my friend :-)

Care to elaborate?

The costs to advertisers (per impression, click, action) are all much higher in the US market than EMEA.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#162
post #29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with recent numbers, but most controversies and calls to stop patronising a service have a positive immediate impact on the numbers of most companies where I worked (and that included Facebook some years ago).

It worked against Digg, but only because a reasonably well-known, functional equivalent existed that people could use instead.

Digg also (IIRC) wasn't an moral outrage against the company, but an reaction to the product itself.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#163
post #143
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, care to elaborate? I'd assume it's the other way around; people who don't want to see ads are probably less likely to click on them and drive revenue, no?

He's in a financial position to afford $10 a month for the relative luxury of not being served ads, meaning he has a relatively large disposable income, meaning he's the kind of person I would want to advertise to.

Ah gotcha, yeah that makes sense.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#164
post #70

Isn't it odd that DAUs/MAUs is consistently 66% in every quarter? Is this a property of the typical use patterns of Facebook, or something they estimated for SEC purposes? EDIT: Also interesting to me that US/NA makes up ~12% of users but ~60% of ad and payment revenue - a sort of downshifted Pareto principle.

Alphabet sees a similar tilt. They got 47% of their revenue from the US in 2017. From what I've read I'd guess they have 200 million to 225m product users in the US market and probably 1.5 billion to 2b outside of it.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet outrage is _never_ as widespread or important as it looks. The best way to predict the effect of any social media campaign against a person or organization is to evaluate the steadfastness of the campaign's target. If you are the target of an internet mob and you blink, you're not only going to enact mob-demanded changes that are detrimental to your interests, but also broadcast weakness and attract further…

I thought the #deleteuber campaign was somewhat successful? My understanding is a series of unfortunate events, largely kicked off by that campaign, ultimately led to Kalanick's downfall. http://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-uber-takedown...

Kalanick is still a very successful founder - not that I necessarily think he should be emulated.

Regardless of what you think of Uber, Travis Kalanick started a very large company, and Uber is as entrenched as ever.

So perhaps this actually is evidence in favor of the parent comment. Did Uber really suffer much at all? Or did they just reshuffle management, pay Kalanick billions to (kind of) leave, and continued business as usual?

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#167
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've always been curious about: if capital gain taxes (for both individuals and corporations) were set to reasonable (high) levels, would there still be a strong argument for taxing corporate profits?

It depends on who you ask I suppose. I think it is reasonable to have 0% tax on corporations if the other taxes were correct. An issue is that under that regime many corps would choose to never pay a dividend, so that would have to be fixed somehow.

If the only tax on corporations occurred when dividends were paid, corporations would just stop paying dividends.

You’ll also have the problem we already have today, where individuals would construct their lives around a closely held corporation. When the corporation is closely held, income is supposed to pass through to the individual for taxation, but the incentives to evade theose rules would be much stronger.

In my perfect world most government revenue would come from land value taxes, with a smattering of Pigovian taxes on top, to the extent that the bureaucracy required to levy them wasn’t too onerous.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I may have to eat some crow from an argument the other day with another HN user. Surveys and #deleteFacebook and protests and so forth seemed to indicate that people did finally start getting interested in their own privacy. But no. Somehow, even with a declining youth demographic and widespread reports of less time spent on site and the CA fiasco, they still ended up with a growth of users in all markets. I've…

We are not heading to a post-privacy world. Post-Privacy means no one can get privacy even if they want it. That has never been the case. What you are merely seeing is people are ok with the amount of data that has been collected on them. The lack of true widespread outrage means we are either at the limit or we can still collect a bit more before users get really pissed.

Only someone who specifically values privacy for its own sake is sensitive to how much data gets “collected” by the first parties they deliberately share it with. The rest of us care how it’s used, and ad targeting is mostly benign. The Facebook scandal is not about data or collection, but how the combination of data and attention can influence politics.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Post-Privacy means no one can get privacy even if they want it. That has never been the case. We are already there. 3-letter govt agencies can listen track your calls, intercept your browsing and read your email. Unless you pay in cash and shop only at your local mom and pop shop, your purchases are already being tracked and reported. Your cellphone carrier is selling your information to third parties.[1] You may n…

Why do you assume everybody is using email, has a cellphone, and only buys goods from mega-corps?

Many HN readers have a very myopic view of the world, constraining their perspective to what they already know and do. There is a whole army of people out there that don't have cellphones, email and don't buy from mega-corps, but those who frequent HN have little knowledge of or connection to those who live exclusively in meatspace.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Post-Privacy means no one can get privacy even if they want it. That has never been the case. We are already there. 3-letter govt agencies can listen track your calls, intercept your browsing and read your email. Unless you pay in cash and shop only at your local mom and pop shop, your purchases are already being tracked and reported. Your cellphone carrier is selling your information to third parties.[1] You may n…

Why do you assume everybody is using email, has a cellphone, and only buys goods from mega-corps?

And license plate readers, and security cameras, and facial recognition, and gait recognition, and . . . and . . . ad infinitum.
Post reply on HN