Facebook has 300 million more active users due to coronavirus measures

Social media platform Facebook had nearly three hundred million more daily and monthly active users in the past quarter compared to a year ago. According to the company, this is because people are more at home due to the corona virus.

In its quarterly report, Facebook reported having an average of 1.79 billion daily active users and 2.7 billion monthly active users. That is an increase of about 12 percent compared to a year ago.

The increase in the number of users who use a service such as Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp every day is higher. According to a datasheet, that has increased by 330 million users to 2.47 billion daily active users. The number of monthly active users of the combined Facebook services increased by 380 million users to 3.14 billion users.

Facebook says, as with the first quarter report, that this increase is due to the corona virus. People stay at home more often because of the pandemic and then use the Facebook services to stay in touch with people and organizations, according to the company. As the coronavirus measures are being unleashed more globally, Facebook expects the number of active users to barely rise, or even fall slightly, in the third quarter.

The consequences of the ad boycott against Facebook are not yet visible in the financial results. Sales increased 11 percent to $ 18.7 billion. Advertising revenue was $ 18.3 billion. For the third quarter, the company expects comparable sales growth.

The company’s net profit nearly doubled from the second quarter of 2019 to $ 5.18 billion. These figures are biased, as Facebook wrote off $ 3.1 billion in the second quarter of 2019, partly because of a settlement that the company reached with the American FTC.