Less time online, but Facebook coining it

FACEBOOK has reported a big jump in profits even though people are spending less time on the world’s biggest social network.

The company said its priority was to encourage personal interaction among users, rather than simply boost the number of hours they spend on Facebook.

Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that changes enacted by Facebook had cut time spent on the site by some 50 million hours a day.

But Facebook’s chief operating officer argued that having users engage more with friends’ posts could lead to further financial opportunities for the company.

“Helping people connect is more important than maximising the time they spend on Facebook,” Zuckerberg said during an earnings call.

“We can make sure the service is good for people’s wellbeing and for society overall.”

He said that in the last couple of years, content from viral videos or posts by businesses had grown to a point where it was crowding out the connections people value most.

Facebook is giving posts from friends and family priority over content that is not as likely to engender genuine personal interactions, according to Zuckerberg.

“We made changes to show fewer viral videos to [ensure] people’s time is well spent,” he said.

“In total, we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day.”

Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said that getting people to engage with more posts by friends actually ramped up opportunities for the social network to make money.

Facebook shares dropped more than four percentage points after the earnings figures were released, but regained lost ground and even rose slightly to $189.30 (R2 249) in aftermarket trades that followed the earnings call.

Facebook said that profit in the final three months of last year climbed 20% to $4.26-billion (R51-billion) as both ad revenue and ranks of members grew.

Revenue in the quarter leapt 47 percentage points to nearly $13-billion (R155-billion), but expenses also rose as its ranks of employees grew to finish the year at 25 105 workers.

Meanwhile, Germany’s anti-trust regulator is opening an investigation into online advertising, responding to concerns expressed by advertisers and publishers over the “significant” market position of US platforms Google and Facebook.

The probe by the Federal Cartel Office opens a second front after it said in December that Facebook had abused its dominant position to collect their personal data.

“A small number of large companies like Goole and Facebook have attained a significant market position,” anti-trust office chief Andreas Mundt said yesterday. – AFP, Reuters