Facebook has announced its Q4 stats for 2012 and they seem quite interesting to analyze. It has been a year full of announcements for Facebook and having a look at their impact might be the answer to the prediction of its future.
According to these stats:
– The monthly active users have reached 1.056 billion, while in Q3 of 2012 they were 1.007 billion.
– The daily active users have reached 618 million, while they were 483 million just a year ago.
– The mobile monthly active users have reached 680 million, while they were 432 million a year ago.
– The exclusively mobile active users have reached 157 million monthly, with a significant increase from the 58 million a year ago.
How do we evaluate these stats?
Facebook has entered a new mobile era, where the focus switches from desktop to smartphone. The digital future is on our smartphones and this also led Facebook to purchase Instagram, in an attempt to gain more power in the mobile platforms. What’s more, Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that they are going to build “mobile-first experiences”, since they have noticed the great opportunities that have arisen through mobile.
We are not sure whether the creation of their own smartphone could be part of their “mobile-first experiences”, but they seem to acknowledge the great potential to increase their revenue through the mobile platform. The fact that the mobile-only users are significantly increasing and that the monthly mobile users are now more than the mobile desktop users indicates that there is indeed a need to invest on the mobile version of Facebook. And if Facebook really finds a way to expand its impact through smartphones it will be its great chance to maintain its domination over their competitors.
We just have to wait and see!