The year has just ended and there is no doubt Facebook has had a successful and rather eventful year as well.
One question that the investors will be asking themselves and dying to know the answer to is whether the social networking company will keep its fire blazing across the New Year 2016 or if things will take a different turn.
When the company went for an IPO, it had some initial problems; however, things have turned out amazingly well for this company, with its stock rising by a massive 180% since it made its debut in 2012. In short, Facebook has been enjoying its growth in the past few years; success that was more than replicated in 2015.
But do winning ways last forever? Well, the bold answer here is NO! It reaches a point when things start taking different turns; however, it seems Facebook is nowhere near this point. To give you a clear picture of what this really is all about, here is an overview of how Facebook will come out in 2016.
Facebook’s year in 2015
Facebook has shown quite some immense progress in the internet space especially that this space is very tight. The social networking company has with no doubt exceled at expanding its core business in addition to acquiring some of the best and already established entities.
In 2010, the company recorded annual revenue of $1.9 billion, however, this changed drastically and four years down the line, the same company recorded revenue of $12.4 billion. With such success online, Facebook is only challenged by Google as far as advertising business is concerned – an area where both companies collect huge amounts of cash.
Facebook has more than 1.5 billion users from all over the world and given its huge repository of actionable user data such as their interests, locations, professions, events and so much more, Facebook has an upper hand of matching audience-specific ads on a scale and specificity that can only be matched by Google.
To make matters even sweeter for potential investors, the fact that Facebook has been adding lots of exciting features and functionalities to its services only shows its intention to acquire more users. Innovations such as Facebook M, Moments, Instant Articles, online shopping and transfer of cash via the same platform, just to name but few, have played a huge role in increasing the level of engagement on the platform. By default, this increases the number of ads that can be showed to users.
What to expect in 2016
As the New Year begins, there is no reason to be pessimistic about the most popular social networking platform.
As you may have noticed, Facebook put a lot of its efforts in innovating the main mobile app as well as third party apps. However, the year 2016 seems to be the year when its three major subsidiaries spring into action as far as revenue is concerned.
The company owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. While Instagram keeps on adding more and more users to its clientele as well as scale its ad business, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger also keep making their names in the instant messaging world. The last two apps have yet to start generating reasonable revenue for Facebook, but there is no doubt that they hold the key to the future success of Facebook as a company.
Oculus was also acquired for a reported $2 billion, a move that clearly shows Facebook is into Virtual Reality. At the moment, the company is also working on Internet.org and many other initiatives and if all these factors are considered, the future is with no doubt huge for any potential Facebook investor.
Leave a Reply