Can Data Lie? Social Media Titans’ Super-Speed Recovery and the Pervasive Disputes (Ⅰ)

Since the outbreak of the global epidemic, many people have coordinated relevant policies and refrained from going outdoors, which has objectively contributed to an acceleration in the shift of commerce from offline to online, especially for social media. Through the network, people can, to a large extent, satisfy their social needs, which promotes the significant growth of data such as the number of users and the online time.

In the midst of the crucial earnings season, major listed technology companies will report their Q3 earnings in October or November. The reported earnings from the three social network titans, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, basically meet the optimistic expectations of the industry.

But the new problem is that the growing ratings of traditional TV programs does not mean a pick-up in the advertising market. In the same way, can the rising earnings show that these social network giants, whose negative issues have frequently come to light, have tided over their difficulties?

The Rising Earnings of the Three Overseas Social Network Titans

The earnings report can reflect a company’s performance at a certain phase. Judging from the earnings, the three leading companies in the social sector, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, have performed very well in terms of their revenues, net profits and daily active users.

Facebook’s revenue totaled $21.47 billion, $16.3 billion-stronger-than-expected revenue ($19.84 billion) and an increase of 22% year over year. Generally, advertising is often the main source of revenue for social platforms, with Facebook generating $21.22 billion in advertising revenue.    

In terms of the net profit, Facebook ushered in a larger increase after its poor performance in previous quarters, hitting $7.846 billion and far exceeding that in the second quarter and first quarter, respectively $5.178 billion and $4,902 billion.

With regard to the daily active users, Facebook daily active users (DAUs) were 1.82 billion on average and monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.74 billion in the third quarter, both an increase of 12% year-over-year, outperforming the market expectation.