Facebook Will Grow Headcount Quickly In 2013 To Develop Money-Making Products, Total Expenses Will Jump By 50 Percent

On Facebook’s earnings call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a strong statement about the company’s further investment in product development, especially those products that are making money for the company.

He said on the call: Facebook will grow headcount quickly in 2013 in product development. This will come at the sacrifice of profits, as the company doubles down on revenue earning products like graph search, Gifts and others. These products, he says, could eventually be the pillars of Facebook’s business.

In 2012 alone, Facebook added 1,419 employees to reach a total staff of 4,619 staffers worldwide. That’s a 44 percent jump. As Zuck explained on the call, the company will continue to hire in product (and likely engineering), so we should expect this number to continue to grow in 2013. And we will surely see plenty more acq-hires.

Additionally, on the call, Facebook CFO David Ebersman revealed that Facebook’s expenses would jump by a whopping 50 percent this year, partly due to hiring. He also added on the earnings call during the Q&A portion of the call, that the investment in R&D will depend on the various product opportunities and financial returns of these products.

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Facebook Q4 2012 Earnings