Boycott against Facebook is of no use, revenue from advertising is...

The tech group, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is more pessimistic about the near future. The threat of stricter regulations for social media companies creates uncertainty.

In addition to Facebook, tech giants Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter also announced their quarterly figures. These sales figures were, without exception, all a lot higher than the previous quarter.

Facebook’s revenue in the third quarter was $ 21.5 billion, an increase of 22 percent from the same period last year. That increase was entirely due to increased revenues from advertisers using Facebook platforms. Operating profit increased by 12 percent to USD 8 billion.

This does not seem to affect the advertising stop that Unilever, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Pepsico, among others, announced against Facebook. The companies announced in July that they would no longer advertise via Facebook for the time being, because the company would do too little to combat racism and hatred on its platforms.

An explanation by financial director David Wehner shows that the dangers for Facebook do not come from the corner of advertisers. He foresees “increasing uncertainty” for 2021. This is partly due to stricter privacy measures in the operating system for iPhones, which may make it more difficult to capitalize on personal data.

In addition, authorities in the European Union restrict the sending of personal data to the United States by social media companies, after the European Court of Justice declared a treaty on this invalid. The American company is also under attack in its own country. A committee of US Congressmen recently ruled scathingly on Facebook’s monopoly position, alluding to the forced split of the company.

Despite the increasing criticism of Facebook, the number of social media users is still growing significantly. In September, the sites of the American internet company had 1.8 billion daily active users, 12 percent more than a year earlier. The number of monthly active users rose just as fast to over 2.7 billion people.

Web store and tech company Amazon has managed to maintain its high growth rate. Because many people preferred to shop from home due to the corona pandemic, sales increased by 37 percent in the third quarter. In addition, the profit of the American concern tripled.

Total revenues amounted to $ 96.1 billion. Net profit amounted to $ 6.3 billion, compared to $ 2.1 billion in the same period a year earlier.

According to CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon is experiencing an unparalleled year. In the current fourth quarter, during the holiday season, he predicts that even more consumers will be shopping and other purchases via platforms of the tech company. The company is counting on a growth in turnover of between 28 and 38 percent.

Amazon said it created 400,000 new jobs this year, hiring 100,000 people. The tech giant was also regularly criticized this year for working conditions in distribution centers, where measures against corona infections would not be sufficient. Amazon itself claims to do everything for the safety of employees. For example, the company carries out corona tests itself. The company expects to spend $ 4 billion in precautions against Covid-19 in the last three months of this year alone.

Apple has recently sold more Mac computers than ever before. This is because people worked from home because of the corona pandemic, but many children worldwide also followed their lessons at home via a computer. The turnover of the iPhone branch was disappointing. That’s because customers had to wait a bit longer for the delayed iPhone 12 to arrive.

Because Apple’s new smartphone was later in the shops, the first sales figures of the iPhone 12 were not included in the last reporting period of the broken financial year. Sales from Macs, iPads, services and the aggregate category that includes the Apple Watch and wireless earbuds all increased.

Apple closed the fiscal year with sales of $ 274.5 billion, up from $ 260.2 billion the year before. The bottom line was a profit of $ 57.4 billion. A year earlier that was almost 55.3 billion dollars.

Google parent Alphabet has recently benefited from increased advertising revenue on the search engine and YouTube. Companies were spending more money on advertising again after saving on it in the second quarter. The cloud activities and the app store also performed well.

YouTube’s ad revenue rose to over $ 5 billion from $ 3.8 billion last year. The cloud services and subscriptions also performed well earlier because many companies switched to working from home. The turnover of that branch increased from 2.4 billion to 3.4 billion dollars.

Alphabet’s revenue in the third quarter was $ 46.2 billion from $ 40.5 billion a year earlier, up 14 percent. The bottom line was a profit of $ 11.2 billion. A year earlier that was 7 billion. The strong figures follow a quarter in which the turnover of the tech giant fell somewhat.

The turnover of Twitter, which in terms of revenue mainly depends on advertising, increased by 14 percent from a year earlier to 936 million dollars. Costs also increased sharply, partly due to the recruitment of new staff and higher spending to attract visitors from other sites to Twitter. As a result, operating profit rose by only 6 percent to $ 56 million.

Compared to the previous three months, Twitter only gained 1 million users who are active on the messaging platform every day. This increase is a major setback, as a result of which Twitter’s share in so-called aftermarket trade plummeted. For example, the platform gained 20 million users in the second quarter. A total of 187 million people are now using Twitter every day.

Looking ahead, Twitter expects to capitalize on the extra strong growth of online shopping driven by corona. At the same time, advertisers may react unexpectedly in the fourth quarter to any unrest surrounding the US election, the company warns. In doing so, Twitter keeps in mind the anti-racism protests and riots in the United States from earlier this year. Together with the corona crisis, these caused a decrease in advertising income by a quarter in the second quarter.

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