With 1 billion monthly visits, Facebook continues to develop social e-commerce

According to the financial report, Facebook's total revenue in the first quarter was $26.17 billion, a 48% increase from the same period last year. In addition, its net profit in the first quarter increased by 94%, from $4.9 billion in the same period last year to $9.5 billion this year. Both total revenue and net profit exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

Facebook attributed the sharp increase in total revenue and net profit to the increase in advertising prices. According to reports, the average price per Facebook ad increased by 30% year-on-year. At the same time, the number of ads served increased by 12%.

In addition to working hard on the advertising business, Facebook is also working hard on the e-commerce business. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook will focus on building e-commerce functions.

Zuckerberg said Facebook Marketplace, Facebook's e-commerce business, now has more than 1 million stores and is visited by more than 1 billion active users each month. Facebook Marketplace is a feature launched by Facebook last year that allows businesses to create product catalogs for sale on their own pages.

After the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the importance of e-commerce has continued to increase, which has also allowed Facebook to find a new growth point. WhatsApp and Instagram, which are "Facebook-affiliated", have also gradually entered the e-commerce market. For example, companies can purchase ads through the WhatsApp Business app, allowing WhatsApp to directly display their Facebook ads and directly jump to them.

Instagram launched Instagram Shops last year, which allows some businesses and top creators to run stores on their personal homepages and sell directly to users.

In a recent live event, Zuckerberg announced that Instagram will launch a new e-commerce feature, Creator Shops. Compared with Instagram Shops, Creator Shops is aimed at more creators.

This should be a good opportunity for independent website sellers . After all, the total number of active users of "Facebook" applications (including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) has reached 3.45 billion. By making reasonable use of the first three applications, independent website sellers can develop a complete social e-commerce business model.

Shopify 's first quarter 2021 financial report showed that the number of stores established by Shopify's independent station on Facebook Shops and the GMV of sales through Facebook have more than tripled.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, Facebook expects total revenue growth to remain stable or grow moderately. In addition, Facebook is facing the problem of "unfavorable advertising targeting" due to regulatory and other challenges. In particular, Apple recently updated the iPhone operating system iOS 14.5, in which the privacy function restricts mobile app tracking, which will make it more difficult for Facebook to customize ads for iPhone and iPad users. This change will have an impact on Facebook's advertising targeting in the second quarter.