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Comment by uptown | Hacker News Reader

Facebook MAU was flat in the U.S. and Canada.

It declined in Europe.

Expect total expense growth to exceed revenue growth in 2019.

Also expect revenue growth rates to decline by high single digit percentages from prior quarters sequentially in Q3 and Q4.

They painted a rough road ahead compared to how the stock had been valued in many people’s models.

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I can see the decline in Europe being unsettling, but I'm not really surprised about US/Canada. ~185 million is about 52% of the population of US/Canada [3]. If we assume 35% of the population is simply too young to use it (20% under 14 [2]) or too old to be drawn to it (15% is over 65 [1]), that leaves only 13% of US/Canada's population which are feasible MAUs no being MAU, which is crazy.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2017/cb17...

[2]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.0014.TO.ZS

[3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=185+million+people+%2F...

Yes, and that's a massive problem. They reached probably what is close to their peak capacity and need to find ways to extract more money out of their existing MAUs because those numbers are stagnant or dropping.

Is it safe to say they're now tied to economic growth in developing nations? I'm sure they'll find ways to make more money out of rich countries for the sake of short-term growth, but if India alone is over 1 billion people, it's interesting to think that over the long term their revenue will depend on the increase of purchasing power in that and other developing nations.

Of course if they're still dominant when this happens.

Long-term, yes, that's basically the only thing they can do. Short-term the imbalance in ARPU between regions is massive and they can't really invest that much in developing nations when there's a magnitude of difference or more in between revenue, regardless of the potential user base.

I wonder how much of the European decline was driven by GDPR rules, especially opt-in requirements. GDPR-like laws are being debated on and passed here in the US by individual states. Probably a tough environment to expand on MAU right now.

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