Facebook Inc (FB), Google Inc (GOOG): How This Social Networking Site Will Continue to Grow

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) bashers have been criticizing the social networking company since its overpriced IPO in May 2012. But the company’s recent earnings report showed that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has finally turned a corner. With revenue and earnings per share of $1.81 billion and $0.19, respectively, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) crushed analyst expectations of $1.6 billion in revenue and $0.14 earnings per share. Those impressive numbers are just the beginning of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s overall goals.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)3 Goals

Zuckerberg has said that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s 3 goals are to connect everyone, understand the world, and help build the knowledge economy.

Connecting everyone means getting Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) to the remaining 5 billion people who aren’t already part of the community. In the last quarter, the company added 45 million monthly users. In addition, total daily users have increased to 700 million.

Current users total roughly 1.15 billion people, who spent a combined 20 billion minutes a day on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)during June. Facebook connects more people than any other social networking site, and the number continues to grow.

Understanding the world means using people’s day-to-day updates in order to create a global store of information. Facebook will use that data to build services that will help users answer specific questions based on the network of friends they’ve built on the site.

Building the knowledge economy means creating an economy where growth depends on quantity, quality, and accessibility of information. Facebook will grow the knowledge economy by gathering consumer information from its members. Using this information, companies will be able to market to specific customers.  There are currently 1 million active advertisers on Facebook — double the year-ago number. In addition, 18 million local businesses use Facebook pages for promotion.

In the last quarter, Facebook’s advertising revenue grew 61% to $1.6 billion. This growth was driven by mobile advertising, which provided 41% of total revenue, up from 30% in the first quarter of 2013. Before the second-quarter results were in, Facebook received criticism on its mobile capabilities and potential for monetization. With this success, Facebook has taken a step toward overcoming one of its biggest challenges.

While these three  goals seem large, Facebook has made progress toward achieving them, and will continue working on them as its Wall Street momentum increases.

Mobile competition

Facebook’s No. 1 competitor is Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). In its most recent quarter, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) posted revenues of $14 billion — a 19% increase year over year — but still missed analyst estimates of $14.5 billion.

Unlike Facebook, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has had trouble with mobile advertising. While Google ads received more clicks last quarter, the average price per click for Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) decreased 2%, marking that figure’s seventh straight quarter of declines. Analysts and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) executives blame this decrease on mobile ads, which cost less and drive down internet advertising prices.

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a much larger company than Facebook, and the transition to mobile advertising will be more difficult than Facebook.  Facebook’s news feed ads are more easily converted to the mobile platform than Google’s text ads.  They also blend in better with the content on the social networking site.

Google experienced a bump in the road, and I think the company will focus more  on mobile advertising in the future. But currently, Facebook has proven to be a more profitable mobile advertiser.

Conclusion

Facebook has finally made significant progress with its mobile advertising and the results are better than most people expected. With effective mobile and desktop advertising, the company has proven that it is profitable as well as popular. It still has a long way to go to achieve its three goals, which will keep the company working hard to innovate in  social media. Like I said a few months ago, I think Facebook is a buy.

The article How This Social Networking Site Will Continue to Grow originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Ben Popkin.

Ben Popkin has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook and Google. Ben is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

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