Despite the Cambridge Analytica privacy breaching scandal, Facebook’s sales rose by more than $3 billion in the first quarter of this year.
The company said that revenues rose to $11.9 billion in the first three months of the year, compared to $8 billion previously.
Mark Zuckerberg, its founder, said: “Despite facing important challenges, our community and business are off to a strong start in 2018. We are taking a broader view of our responsibility and investing to make sure our services are used for good. But we also need to keep building new tools to help people connect, strengthen our communities, and bring the world closer together.”
Facebook said its advertising revenue rose to $11.7 billion in the three months to the end of March, compared to $7.8 billion in the same period a year ago.
First quarter profits also grew, reaching $4.9 billion compared to $3 billion last year. Facebook said the average number of daily active users over March had risen to 1.45 billion, a 13 per cent increase year-on-year.
The average number of monthly active users for March also rose by 13 per cent, to 2.2 billion, and the number of staff saw a steep 48 per cent increase to 27,742.
Facebook had in March faced a controversy over yielding millions of users’ data to Cambridge Analytica which reportedly manipulated it during U.S President Donald Trump’s electioneering in 2016.
(EXCLUSIVEPP)
