Ahead of its IPO Facebook released quarterly results which reveal that the social network has now got 901 million active monthly members, which is up from 680 million in 2011.
Of the 901 million users, a staggering 525 million users use the social network on a daily basis. As Facebook gets more users it makes more money and according to the results revenue is indeed up.
Facebook managed to achieve revenue in excess of $1 billion dollars, which is up from $731 this time last year. Though the social network is in rude health, profits were actually down from $233 million to $205.
This fall was attributed to increased spending on research and development and marketing. But, if Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram had happened before March 31st that profit would have been completely wiped out.
The filing reveals a few new details about the Instagram purchase, according to the records the deal included £300 million cash and 23 million Facebook shares – which makes the whole deal worth an eye-watering $1 billion dollars.
On the Instagram acquisition, the filing reads: “Following the closing of this acquisition, we plan to maintain Instagram’s products as independent mobile applications to enhance our photos product offerings and to enable users to increase their levels of mobile engagement and photo sharing.”
Though we already know a lot of this, it was revealed today that if the deal hadn’t gone through it would have cost Facebook $200 million in break-up fees.
Facebook’s spending hasn’t stopped there; today they announced that they are paying Microsoft $550 million for patents Microsoft recently bought from AOL, beating competition from other rivals including Microsoft.
A Facebook lawyer described the deal as: “Another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook’s interests.”
Facebook was recently sued by internet search engine Yahoo for patent infringement earlier this year and the purchase of patents from Microsoft is a direct result of this perceived threat.
“Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction,” said Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith.
Microsoft bought 925 patents and patent applications from AOL. It is now selling 650 of those patents to Facebook as well as licences to the other 275.
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