Facebook user base increases 13 percent with 1.4 billion active users
Facebook had an excellent fourth quarter and ended the year with 1.39 billion active users which in many ways is more impressive than their trading figures. To put this in perspective, this is an active user base of about 20 percent of all the people on the planet including those too young to type or too old to care. Excluding those groups, the market penetration is approaching one third of the world's growing population.
In any given day, 890 million users login to check their Facebook page, interact with other Facebook users, chat on instant message or add something to their wall. Facebook have simply become a global phenomenon almost no one can ignore. The only market left to target is China.
The largest potential market of them all is acting as an isolationist by blocking successful Western web sites from being seen inside China. The country is using sophisticated techniques to block users who would want to access Facebook and several other major Western companies and is now blocking Outlook and Gmail access even through VPN services.
With domination in China, Facebook probably could double its daily active user count and improve revenues and profitability but for now at least that just doesn't look all that likely.
Mobile Key To Growth Model
Mobile apps has been a key driver of growth for Facebook with 526 million users who only ever access the service through the mobile app. The mobile user base has grown at an alarming 78 percent from the 296 million users that used mobile a year ago. Clearly mobile is where the future is for the company.
The daily user count for mobile devices sits at 745 million, which also includes users who use desktop and other methods to access Facebook, but also access the service through their mobile app as well.
Facebook Lite To Make It Easier To Access Facebook on Slower Connections
Facebook Lite is also expected to perform well. Its goal is to bring Facebook services to markets where internet connections are much slower by streaming lining what is downloaded and displayed inside the Facebook Lite app to make it faster to use the service.
Revenues, Profits and Mobile Advertising All Growing
Year over year, the company enjoyed a 58 percent leap in revenue. Revenues totalled $12.47 billion in 2014 with a healthy $701 million falling to the bottom line. Advertising on the mobile platform was a major contributing factor which grew 69 percent in the last quarter of 2014 (up from 53 percent in the same quarter in 2013).
Facebook at Work
Facebook at Work, their business focused app, is expected to key mover in 2015 to expand the company's presence in the business arena moving it as much to a business to business (B2B) play as it is a business to consumer (B2C) one presently.
Other than in China there seems to be no stopping the effectiveness of the Facebook business model as the user base continues to grow. And unlike with other social media sites like MySpace where the fickle users skip from one social media site to another, Facebook appears to have far more staying power than most.
