Social media behemoth Facebook booked revenues of US$29 billion for the third quarter of 2021, a 33 per cent increase on the $21 billion booked for the same period last year.

This saw the Mark Zuckerberg-led digital platform post a net income of $9.1 billion for the quarter under review, a 17 per cent increase on the corresponding period in 2020.

Over the last month, Facebook has faced a barrage of negative press with its operations called into question. It even suffered the ignominy of its sites going down for several hours earlier in October (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) which caused chaos across the world.

This only served to highlight just how essential Facebook is to modern communications and its impact on how we live today.

Mark Zuckerberg’s stewardship of Facebook has been placed under the microscope and the impact his invention, has on culture, morals and acceptable behaviour continues to be questioned and evaluated.

Nevertheless, despite the backlash, Facebook continues to prosper and remains the most popular social media platform used today.

For September 2021, Facebook registered on average 1.93 billion Daily Active Users (DAU), a six per cent increase year over year. As of September 30, 2021, its monthly active users (MAU) also increased by 6 per cent to 2.91 billion.

Facebook now employs 68,177 people as of September 30, 2021, an increase of 20 per cent year-over-year.

Chief Financial Officer of Facebook, Dave Wehner in his outlook report said: “We are dedicating significant resources toward our augmented and virtual reality products and services which are an important part of our work to develop the next generation of online social experiences.

“We expect fourth-quarter 2021 total revenue to be in the range of $31.5 billion to $34 billion. Our outlook reflects the significant uncertainty we face in the fourth quarter in light of continued headwinds from Apple’s iOS 14 changes and macroeconomic and COVID-related factors. In addition, we expect non-ads revenues to be down year-over-year in the fourth quarter as we lap the strong launch of Quest 2 during last year’s holiday shopping season.”

Facebook will be monitoring developments regarding the viability of transatlantic data transfers and their potential impact on its European operations.

Wehner continued: “We expect 2021 total expenses to be in the range of $70 to $71 billion updated from our prior outlook of $70-$73 billion. We anticipate our full-year total expenses [for] 2022, will be in the range of $91-$97 billion driven by investments in technical and product talent and infrastructure-related costs.”