Facebook Revenues Adversely Affected By Coronavirus Pandemic Despite Usage Growth

With various countries under total lockdown, internet usage has recorded a sudden increase which is nearly overwhelming the infrastructure. Social media usage has also greatly increased, and that may translate directly to more revenue on tech firms in the industry.

Surprisingly, that isn’t the case, specifically for Facebook. In a blog post published on Tuesday, the company said it has seen a massive increase in the usage mostly across its messaging services which the company doesn’t monetize widely.

The company’s ads business has also weakened especially in countries that have responded aggressively to the ongoing pandemic.

“We don’t monetize many of the services where we’re seeing increased engagement, and we’ve seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19.”

Facebook has seen up to 50 per cent uptick in usage numbers in heavily affected areas across Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Voice and video calling alone have more than doubled, according to the company.

In Italy, for instance, time spent across the Facebook portfolio of apps has grown up to 70%, Instagram and Facebook Live views have doubled in a week while messaging has increased by half and time spent in group calls has increased by 10 folds in the last month.

Like other tech firms which are putting on drastic measures to ensure they don’t experience downtimes, Facebook says their service is built to withstand spikes in times of need.

But lately, just like everyone else in the industry, the usage spike is unusual with the company recording new usage records “almost every day.” The company says its working on ways to ensure their apps are “fast, stable, and reliable.”

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