FEATURE – In this photo on April 4, 2013, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks to the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Facebook dropped 13.5% after political allegations A company that was working for the Trump campaign got inappropriate data from millions of Facebook users. On Monday, March 26, 2018, the Federal Trade Commission stated that it was investigating the privacy practices of the social media giant and that lawmakers in the United States and the United Kingdom have asked for answers and asked for investigations. (AP photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez, file) ORG XMIT: NYBZ116 (Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP)

Facebook has suffered the biggest single-day loss in the history of Wall Street after the financial results of Wednesday after Cambridge Analytica. Are users and investors hostile to Facebook because of the scandal? It is not so simple.

What triggered the sale?

One word: Growth. Most companies would like to have the kind of financial results released by Facebook after the market closes on Wednesday. But investors have different criteria for fast-growing technology companies. In a revenue call with analysts, Facebook executives poured a bucket of icy water over Wall Street's expectations of rapid revenue growth and profit margins that propelled the stock to record levels. As a result, Facebook has had its worst day in six years as a public company.

Has Facebook's revenue growth slowed?

Yes. Revenues grew 42% year-over-year, which, though impressive, is the slowest growth rate since 2015. Facebook also has not missed Wall Street's revenue estimates for the first time in three years

. the rest of the year. Analysts were blinded. "Many investors are struggling to reconcile this deceleration," Jefferies analyst Brent Thill told Facebook executives

. Is the Cambridge Analytica scandal to blame?

Cambridge Analytica employee, Christopher Wylie, arrives at the United States Capitol for a meeting with Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee on April 25, 2018 Washington DC, DC

People's feelings about Facebook faded after the company admitted that 87 million people had obtained personal information from Cambridge Analytica, a company related to the Trump campaign, but the stock had jumped since the scandal. March, closing at a record $ 217.50 Wednesday before Facebook posts its second-quarter financial results, the first full quarter since the scandal broke.

Bu The results left no doubt that Cambridge Analytica and other scandals had wreaked havoc, since the ongoing investigations into Russian manipulations of Facebook during the 2016 presidential election and the incessant criticism about spreading misinformation on Facebook. as in Myanmar and Sri Lanka where this misinformation required a deadly tribute.

Is Facebook now paying all these scandals?

Yes. Wall Street has been troubled by rising operating costs of the company exceed revenue growth. Part of this is to hire a lot of workers, partly to fight the problems on Facebook, including the manipulation of foreign elections. It also invests in video content, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The Menlo Park, Calif., Company had 30,275 employees as of June 30, an increase of 47% from the previous year.

Do people use Facebook less?

Facebook is so huge, 2.23 billion people use it every month, that it can not continue to grow like a weed forever. But investors were not prepared for Wednesday's figures released by Facebook that showed people were not hanging out as much on Facebook

Facebook posted the lowest growth rates so far in the number of people using Facebook once per month and once a day. In addition, growth has stabilized in the largest market of Facebook, the United States and Canada, where it has 185 million daily users, and decreased by 1% in Europe where it counts 279 million daily users.

More: Bye Facebook, Hello Instagram: More users are separating from Facebook

Even before Cambridge Analytica, USA TODAY surveyed dozens of social media users and many of them said that they spent less time on Facebook after the bitterly divisive presidential elections.

But Facebook's growth had to slow down for a while. Many people who use the Internet around the world are already on Facebook. The other factor that hurt Facebook in the second quarter: Europe has introduced strict new data laws that, according to Facebook, have reduced the number of daily visits to this region.

Could this be good for Facebook and Facebook users? could benefit Facebook and Facebook users in the long run. Facebook has had a bad reputation of being too lax in protecting people's private information, not monitoring and stopping bad behavior on the platform and letting misinformation go wild. Now you have to recognize these problems and spend a lot of money to repair them. Facebook also said on Wednesday that part of the reason revenue growth would slow down is that Facebook is giving its users greater control over the privacy of their data, which undermines Facebook's advertising targeting capabilities.

I own Facebook shares. Is there a silver lining?

Yes, just ask for Facebook. This money line is the other Facebook applications: Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook is counting on these three apps, each of which has more than one billion users to support future growth. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hammered this point in the conference call with analysts with a big statistic: 2.5 billion people use at least one of Facebook's applications every day.

Instagram, in particular, is a plus point. Facebook does not bust the Instagram business figure, but analysts believe that it has contributed significantly to the second quarter business figure. During the revenue call, Zuckerberg called the Instagram acquisition "amazing" and said that Instagram grew twice as fast as if she had been part of Facebook. "The company continues to grow, and while the Facebook platform is starting to slow down, the company's other products continue to grow dramatically," said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. In a research note

It is important to remember that Facebook remains one of the leading players in digital advertising, especially mobile advertising, just behind Google. Mobile advertising accounted for 91% of Facebook advertising revenue in the second quarter, up from 87% a year ago.

Read or share this story: https://usat.ly/2NKlAGc