Zuckerberg: People Spent 5% Less Time on Facebook After Changes

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in announcing its quarterly results that the changes the social network has made to its news feed have resulted in people spending five percent less time on the platform.

In discussing the figures for the fourth quarter of 2017, Zuckerberg says that the decrease amounts to 50 million hours per day. The Facebook CEO claims that in reality this is a positive development, because “it makes the community and the company stronger in the long run.” Emphasizing “meaningful interactions” would make the time people spend on the social network more valuable, he adds. By the changes, he refers to the update that allows users to see more videos that emphasize social interaction. In December and January, Facebook announced changes that should affect the way people spend time on its platform.

At the end of the discussion of the figures, the question was also raised whether the decrease in the number of hours was actually caused by those changes. Zuckerberg didn’t answer that question directly, reiterating what he said earlier in the conversation about the changes in News Feed video during the fourth quarter. He added that Facebook “takes social media use and its impact on well-being very seriously” and that it is the company’s responsibility to “understand everything that goes on on its platform.”

In terms of the number of daily active users, there is a growth of 14 percent compared to the same quarter in 2016. This brings the global average to 1.4 billion daily active users. From the third quarter to the fourth quarter, the number of US and Canadian daily users decreased by 1 million to 184 million, breaking the growth trend. The number of European daily active users grew by 3 million quarter on quarter to 277 million. Remarkably, the revenue per European user has risen sharply, by almost 30 percent quarter-on-quarter, to $8.86 per user. American and Canadian users also pay more; there is an increase of more than 25 percent.

Facebook’s annual revenue was $40.6 billion, of which $39.9 billion from advertising. The 2016 annual revenue was $27.6 billion. The net annual profit for 2017 was 15.9 billion euros compared to 10.2 billion in the previous year.

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