Facebook filed for the largest IPO in history today and the world’s largest social network revealed some interesting figures in its filings. What really stuck out to us is that Facebook said that half of its users are now mobile, so that means 425 million users poke, comment and share links via a phone.
TechCrunch did a great job of digging through the filing to come up with that figure and Facebook itself points out that these numbers are based on its own internal metrics. The Facebook apps may be helping to juice the “active user” count, as some apps automatically connect without the user even meaning to use the service, the company said.
Still, it’s clear that mobile is going to play a large role in the future of Facebook for a variety of reasons. With 825 million users overall, Facebook may already have nearly all the users in certain markets on PCs. As it utilizes initiatives like Facebook Zero ( which gives people in emerging markets free data access for Facebook), mobile may be the main growth category for the company.
We’ve also heard multiple rumors that Facebook is building its own phone and the IPO may give it more resources to push this through for the masses. Designing and building consumer electronics at scale is very capital intensive, so this may have been a small reason why it decided to go public.
Going public cuts both ways though, as there will be more pressure to generate revenues and I’m thinking that could mean ads in the mobile products. I’m not too upset with this but I also hope this means that we’ll also see desktop features like Skype calling work its way to the mobile products.
[Via TechCrunch]