In Q2 of 2013, Facebook grew to 1.15 billion monthly active users up from 1.11 billion at the end of Q1, 669 million daily active users from 665 million, and to 819 million mobile monthly active users from 751M. These totals don’t tell the whole story, though, as much of Facebook’s growth is coming from Asia and developing markets where it doesn’t earn as much money per user.
Mobile daily active users hit 469 million on average for June 2013. Facebook’s mobile-only user count grew from 189 in Q1 to 219 million at the end of June. In June, Facebook saw 20 billion minutes of usage per day, or 17.39 minutes per day per user, or 8.3 hours per user per month. On the earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s data shows that teens are not fleeing the social network, that Facebook has close to full penetration amongst teens in the United States, and that teens remain steadily engaged with the service.
As for the dollars brought in by the social network, Facebook hit $1.81B in revenue, up 53%, and mobile hit 41% of ad revenue. You can see Facebook’s full financial earnings numbers here.
Other highlights from Facebook’s growth include that Instagram saw 5 million video uploads in the first 24 hours after the feature’s release, and recently hit 130 million users. Facebook for Every Phone recently surpassed 100 million monthly active users just two years after the rich, feature phone version of Facebook launched. Facebook’s acquisition Parse announced last month that 100,000 apps have been built on its mobile backend-as-a-service, up from 60,000 when Facebook bought it.
Breaking down its user growth by geography, we see that Facebook grew 2.15% from 139 million in Q1 to 142 million daily active users (DAU) in Q2 the United States and Canada, and 1.53% from 195 million to 198 million monthly active users (MAU). Europe grew even slower, up just 1.67% in DAU, and 1.11% in MAU.
But in Asia and the rest of the world, Facebook is still adding users at a quick pace. In the “rest of world”, Facebook expanded DAUs 8.33% this quarter from 180 million to 195 million, and MAUs 5.81% from 327 million to 346 million. And in its strongest growth market this quarter, Asia saw an 8.38% DAU increase from 167 million to 181 million, and a 6.26% MAU increase from 319 million to 339 million.
It’s important to understand that aggregate growth numbers don’t necessarily explain what’s happening to Facebook’s business. Much of Facebook’s growth right now is coming from developing markets where it doesn’t earn as high of an average revenue per user (ARPU). Worldwide Facebook earned $1.60 per user, but only $0.63 per user in the “rest of world” geography which is propping up its growth.
Unfortunately, Facebook still isn’t breaking out its mobile user growth by geography. This allows it to obscure whether its mobile growth is predominantly coming from the developing world.
Overall, it was another relatively steady quarter of user growth for Facebook. While it may be running out of users to add in the first-world, it still managed to grow by about 8.3% this quarter in Asia and the rest of the world. Despite naysayers claiming Facebook is bound to lose its cool and hit a wall, it keeps getting bigger and is further solidifying its status as a critical communication utility.
