Good news for Facebook, which has had a very difficult few months in recent times, with the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. But it seems that the entrepreneurship that the social network is giving off does not stop at anything…
Facebook announced its earnings for the last quarter. The company reported a profit of $ 1.69 per share, which means revenue of $ 11.97 billion for the quarter, much better than Wall Street estimates.
In particular, the increase in revenue increased by 49% compared to the same quarter last year, which shows that despite the adverse conditions created by the company's behavior, the social network managed to survive, not only unscathed but also with much more profit.
The growth of users in Facebook's database was also steady. The company has 49 million daily users and today 1.45 billion people use the service every day.
All of the above can confirm that Mark Zuckerberg's negative answer to Senator Lindsey Graham's question is probably not true:
Senator Lindsey Graham asked Zuckerberg:
“Who is your biggest competitor?”
The CEO tried to answer the question by citing Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft as “duplications” to Facebook.
“If I buy a Ford, and it doesn’t work well, and I don’t like it, I can buy a Chevy. If I’m frustrated with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product that I can sign up for?” Graham asked, interrupting Zuckerberg.
When Zuckerberg tried to break down Facebook’s different types of services again, Graham repeated his question.
“I don't talk about categories. I talk about the real competition you face. Because car companies face great competition. They make a defective car, it goes out into the world, and people stop buying it and buy another. Is there an alternative solution for Facebook?”
Zuckerberg tried to point out that the “average American uses eight different apps” to connect with their friends, trying to frame Facebook as just one of many apps out there. Shortly after, Graham interrupted him and asked if he thought Facebook was a monopoly.
“I certainly don’t think so,” Zuckerberg replied.
A company that survived a scandal of this magnitude probably has nothing to fear anymore. The fact should concern many, from users themselves (who can judge) to regulators (who don’t follow financial interests). The social network’s unbridled rise brings to the fore a future power that will have no political or social values, but is listed on the Stock Exchange.
We are now talking about stock market values, which leave no room for social policy and interest in the individual and his privacy. What we are starting to notice and may later “grow” is that governments, but also the stakeholders themselves, are having difficulty defining large online companies (see Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.). Of course, all or most of us know what is happening with the Internet giants and our personal information, but we show an unprecedented tolerance.
Perhaps what we are observing happening at the moment is the harbinger of the Internet and the society that is coming, when we “ancients” (Digital Immigrants according to Tsiopela) who have these outdated memories of an era when there were no mobile phones, “pass” by.
I quote an excerpt from Digital Natives by Dimitra Tsiopela
Digital Natives live most of their lives online, without separating the online from the offline. Instead of treating their digital and real-world identities as separate things, they have only one (with representations in two, three, or more spaces). They don’t see hybrid lives as something strange. Through social media, they connect, talk, and share photos with friends from all over the world. They may even collaborate creatively or politically in ways that would have been impossible thirty years ago. But in this relentlessly connected world, the essence of relationships—even what it means to be “friends” with someone—is changing. Online friendships are based on much the same elements that traditional friendships are based on—shared interests, frequent interaction, and so on—but they also have one very different characteristic: They often disappear, and it’s easy to slip in and out of them without even saying goodbye. And it may also be persistent in ways we don’t yet understand.
The brain of a person who grows up in video games and virtual digital worlds is used to saying, “I can quit what I’m doing whenever I want” and “I want a reward here and now! I don’t like long-term effort that will compensate me in the distant future.” For a person who is used to reading according to the F-pattern, it is very difficult to read even one page of a book with the necessary attention to the entire text. All of these are factors that affect children’s behavior and performance in the classroom, and educators must now take them into account. “We have an open and ever-changing brain and a technology that demands that we become faster and more automatic. The natural consequence of this is that the likelihood of making mistakes increases,” says Laura-Ann Petitto, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Toronto and a pioneer in research on speech disorders…
The pessimistic scenario says that we downgrade verbal and computational skills to “low-level knowledge,” while upgrading the skills of information gathering, pattern recognition and spatial control, which are enhanced by long hours in front of a computer screen. This will be the first step in a series of downgrades that will follow Digital Natives through high school and university, until everyone comes out of the educational process with a PhD in Googling. The optimistic scenario says that the Digital Age generation will be the most creative and communicative of all. It will change the world and culture in ways we never imagined and will give equal opportunities to more people by providing free and unlimited access to all kinds of information.
