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More than 70 percent of Facebook's $3.54 billion revenue is now mobile

More than 70 percent of Facebook's $3.54 billion revenue is now mobile

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News Feed ads are the fuel to build new drones and virtual reality headsets

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We've learned a couple of things about Facebook over its first three years as a public company. It knows how to mint money, is increasingly mobile, and somehow keeps adding users despite having what feels like every internet-connected human being on the planet already signed up for its service. The company, which reported its first quarter earnings today, now has 1.44 billion monthly active users, and 1.25 billion on mobile, an increase of 13 and 24 percent, respectively. A whopping 936 million people use it every single day.

Facebook continued to cruise, posting revenue of $3.45 billion, up 42 percent over the same period last year. The shift to mobile continues, with 73 percent of its revenue coming from mobile ads as compared to 59 percent for this period last year. On the earnings call, Zuckerberg dropped one interesting detail. Facebook now sees over one billion searches on mobile every day.

The company had net income of $1.19 billion, up 28 percent compared to $926 million for the first quarter of 2014. The company saw more than four billion daily video views. "Video is exploding on mobile," said COO Sheryl Sandberg on the earnings call. Revenue was low compared to expectations, while profits were high, and the stock was largely flat in after-hours trading.

Facebook's costs were way up. It spent $2.61 billion, an increase of 83 percent year over year. Not surprisingly this shrunk its operating margin to 26 percent compared to 43 percent in the first quarter of 2014. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been adamant that the company will continue to invest heavily in areas as diverse as solar-powered drones and virtual reality in order to be on the cutting edge of technology's next important shift. The company's biggest expense as a percentage of revenue was research and development, and on the earnings call the company indicated this was its biggest driver of new hiring as well.