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Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

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Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#41

Post by mevile »

Barrin92 wrote: post #35
cm2012 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there's no real life downside to FB using your data to show you more relevant ads, people are making the rational trade-off. Privacy issues with FB are ideology based in nature.

There is research being done on targeted advertisement, and apart from the obvious effect of altering your behaviour and your attention, there has been research shown that it can go as far as changing self-perception.[1] So to claim that there is no downside to targeted marketing is simply false. We have very little understanding what sort of effects it has on consumers, and as far as we know they're not all good. Th…

Fair enough, but it's up to each individual to learn about these details and then make a decision if they still want to use Facebook. The media is doing their job reporting on this, and everyone else can learn from this and decide that hey, maybe using Facebook products are not worth the harm. Or maybe they are fine with it and like the relevant ads and continue to use Facebook.

If social media makes you unhappy just stop using it.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#42

Post by malvosenior »

Barrin92 wrote: post #35
cm2012 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there's no real life downside to FB using your data to show you more relevant ads, people are making the rational trade-off. Privacy issues with FB are ideology based in nature.

There is research being done on targeted advertisement, and apart from the obvious effect of altering your behaviour and your attention, there has been research shown that it can go as far as changing self-perception.[1] So to claim that there is no downside to targeted marketing is simply false. We have very little understanding what sort of effects it has on consumers, and as far as we know they're not all good. Th…

What are you claiming the downside to targeted advertising is? A change in self perception from a single (dubious) study doesn't suggest negative effects.

Why do I say the study was dubious? They showed a small number of undergraduates a luxury watch ad and told them it was being shown to them based on their behavior. Those participants then rated themselves more sophisticated. Of course if someone frames it like that they would say they were sophisticated. What is the negative there?

Most people using FB aren't thinking that though, they're just silently ignoring the ads on the side of the content they actually want.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#43

Post by nzbahz »

yumraj wrote: post #25
nodesocket wrote: post #17

Just continues to show, privacy issues don't matter to companies because it doesn't affect profitability and the stock price. Even with barrage of constant #deletefb and "I deleted my facebook" posts, it didn't actually matter. Essentially no change to daily active users and advertising revenue.

Yes, that is why you need regulation to drive change.

So your point is that people must care about it, and if they don't it doesn't matter because we'll take away Facebook anyway?

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#44

Post by pavlov »

Facebook is a weird mass-market product because the average American tech industry pundit has very little visibility into how it’s actually used around the world.

Take Facebook Watch. Ask a journalist or HN commenter, and they’ll tell you that it’s a content wasteland, a flop, a waste of investment. Here’s what Zuckerberg said about Watch on the earnings call:

"There are now 400 million people who use it every month, and people spend on average over 20 minutes on Watch daily."

That’s a lot more monthly active users than Snapchat has — for a part of the app which everyone automatically assumes to be a flop. That’s what global 2.3 billion users looks like: your local anecdata doesn’t tell anything.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#45

Post by djsumdog »

chollida1 wrote: post #5

Pre: - still 30% off highs Numbers: - 4Q EPS $2.38, Est. $2.18 - 4Q Rev. $16.91B, Est. $16.39B - 4Q Mobile Ad Rev. as % Ad Rev. 93% - Mobile represents 93% of ad revenue. Mark doesn't get enough credit for his big switch to mobile, - Cost of revenue up 74 percent year over year - Operating costs went up by 60%, Note this is more than their growth rate, really the only concerning thing from a good quarter - Annual cap…

How many of the lost users were part of the Facebook account purge?

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#46

Post by reaperducer »

chollida1 wrote: post #14
zepearl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that this chart of historical DAU (Daily Active Users) is correct? https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebook-global-d... Looks too stable to me (especially taking into account the scandals). What's the definition of DAU anyway? E.g. if I used it on 2 days in a row, e.g. yesterday and today, and then do nothing, am I counted as a DAU or not for that quarter? Or maybe I have to be active for at l…

Yes, I assume its correct, though to be clear, I have absolutely no way to validate it. This quote from an analyst is one reason why I believe the user numbers. > "It's hard to get people to stop using something they love. People love using these products, and there's these massive attacks that news outlets continue to heap on them, but consumers like these platforms and advertisers follow eyeballs. Most of Facebook'…

and there's these massive attacks that news outlets continue to heap on them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_the_messenger

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#47

Post by jedberg »

nerdface wrote: post #31

The whole market is up due to today's announcement of interest rates remaining the same, not any unique announcement to Facebook.

You could potentially explain the normal trading hours bump because of that, but the after hours is definitely on the earnings news.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#48

Post by djsumdog »

Facebook is the only way a lot of people have to contact one another. I feel like only celebrities deleted FB accounts during the whole #DeleteFacebook thing. Furthermore, I think a lot of that campaign (and be honest, it was not organic. It was a purposeful campaign by news and media giants in an attempt to show they still dominated the minds of people in the world) was a battle of the old rich vs the nouveau riche as Gatsby would say.

I wrote more about this last year, specifically focusing on Zuckerberg's rumors of eyeing the presidency:

https://fightthefuture.org/article/facebook-politics-and-orw...

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#49

Post by zepearl »

cm2012 wrote: post #26
zepearl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thx In the meanwhile I found this (2015) about MAU: https://www.adweek.com/digital/monthly-active-users-definiti... >>We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our Messenger app (and is also a registered Facebook user), in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement. I suppose that DAU is the same, but of course…

Things tend to smooth out at high volumes.

Well, even if the volume is very high, the scandals had planetary coverage, therefore I would still expect to see some kind of impact? Or would it still be too little to show a variance in the trend?

Dumping here links of DAU/MAU charts of other apps (no specific selection - it's all what I was able to find):

MAU

- WeChat: https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-...

- Twitter: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly...

- Instagram: https://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly...

DAU:

-Snapchat: https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/

The most stable one seems to be the one of WeChat? I personally understood that without it, when living in China, your life can get very hard as you're not even able to pay for some services or get loans etc... (therefore there is a lot a direct pressure to use it).

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#50

Post by shostack »

chollida1 wrote: post #14
zepearl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that this chart of historical DAU (Daily Active Users) is correct? https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebook-global-d... Looks too stable to me (especially taking into account the scandals). What's the definition of DAU anyway? E.g. if I used it on 2 days in a row, e.g. yesterday and today, and then do nothing, am I counted as a DAU or not for that quarter? Or maybe I have to be active for at l…

Yes, I assume its correct, though to be clear, I have absolutely no way to validate it. This quote from an analyst is one reason why I believe the user numbers. > "It's hard to get people to stop using something they love. People love using these products, and there's these massive attacks that news outlets continue to heap on them, but consumers like these platforms and advertisers follow eyeballs. Most of Facebook'…

Following eyeballs and good ROI do not always go hand-in-hand.

In my dream world I'd love to see a more granular ARPU breakdown and how much of that came from growth in ad impressions/user vs. increased CPMs for advertisers as well as some sort of count of advertisers and their spend by tier of advertiser size. If I recall correctly, one of the fairly recent moves was cutting bad on FB feed ad frequency which resulted in increasing CPMs and in theory concentrating the advertiser base further to those big brands that can afford the higher CPMs.

Many advertisers are experiencing higher CPMs on FB properties as one might expect as they consolidate their hold on the market. As that continues, at a certain point ROI may not be that good, and they may see diminishing returns and look elsewhere. That's the normal cycle of saturation of ad sources. The question is how long FB can stretch that out and innovate.

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