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Facebook said Monday its revenue rose 35 percent year-on-year to $29 billion in the three months ended September, while profits rose 17 percent to $9.2 billion, a sign of the social network’s financial strength in the face of public relations. crisis over offensive remarks made by a former employee.
Advertising revenue, which accounts for the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue, rose 33 percent to $28.3 billion. “Other” revenue, largely made up of sales of Facebook’s virtual reality Oculus hardware, rose 195% to $734 million.
Nearly 3.6 billion people now use one of the Facebook apps each month, up 12 percent from the previous year.
“We made good progress this quarter and our community continues to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “I am particularly excited about our roadmap for creators, commerce, and helping build the metadatabase” – a vision of the future espoused by technologists, where different parts of the digital world will merge with parts of the offline world. Mr. Zuckerberg said he hopes Facebook will be known as a “metaverse company” in the coming years.
The results were a continuation of the company’s strong financial performance during the coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed people indoors to their computers and other devices.
But in recent weeks, Facebook has faced intense political pressure. Frances Haugen, a former whistleblower, shared thousands of pages of internal documents and said the company chose “profit over people”. Ms. Haugen’s remarks were first Wall Street Journal, sparked a storm of criticism from legislators, regulators and the public. Lawmakers largely focused on reports showing how Facebook works. She knew Instagram was exacerbating her body image issues among young people, among other issues.
More than a dozen news outlets published Monday, including The New York Times. Articles based on Facebook Papers, a cache document Ms. Haugen received before she left the company. A few hours later, he testified before British lawmakers that the company did not want to stop the harmful aspects of its products because doing so could jeopardize profits and growth.
Facebook seems to be preparing itself for long-term, expensive growth plans. The company said it will split the Facebook Reality Labs segment into a different reporting unit in its quarterly earnings statements. This segment will be separate from the rest of the company’s so-called “Family of Apps” – Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook.
Facebook Reality Labs, or FRL, invests heavily in technologies like virtual and augmented reality. Mr. Zuckerberg’s long-term goal is for the department to help Facebook become a key player and creator of the so-called metaverse. However, at the moment the unit spends more than it does and will do so for a while.
“We are committed to bringing this long-term vision to life and look forward to increasing our investments over the next few years,” the company said in its earnings statement. Facebook expects FRL to cut its overall 2021 profits close to $10 billion.
Facebook shares rose 2.6 percent to $337.25 in after-hours trading.
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