Despite Facebook Milestone, Wall Street Notes Declining Growth

By Karla Robinson
October 5, 2012

Facebook announced that it passed the one billion user mark in September, but the news only “confirmed expectations on Wall Street that growth is actually trailing off,” reports Reuters.
The social network acknowledged that the new-user growth will slow down, and there are doubts that “the company can squeeze more and more dollars out of each network member — given well-publicized struggles to monetize the growing ranks of users who access Facebook from mobile devices,” notes the article.
“Facebook has rolled out a spate of initiatives to spur more growth, including a new advertising platform and measurement methods to show marketers they are getting bang for their buck,” Reuters reports. “But it is also exploring options beyond advertising, which accounted for roughly 84 percent of the total revenue in the second quarter.”
This week, the company said it was introducing a fee-based feature that will help U.S. users boost their visibility. It also has a new gift-sending e-commerce effort.
“In its last earnings report, Facebook said revenue increased by 32 percent to $1.18 billion in the second quarter. But that marked the slowest pace of quarterly revenue growth since the first quarter of 2011 — the earliest data available.”
“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

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