Asia is now Facebook’s biggest region

Mark Zuckerberg. Photo credit: Facebook.

Asia is now Facebook’s biggest region in terms of daily active users, shows new data today from the social network. With 396 million people across Asia using Facebook each day, the continent is now larger than the “rest of the world” for the first time ever.

Facebook’s Asia users have rocketed by 57 percent in the past two years – far outpacing growth anywhere else.

“In December, 1.23 billion people used Facebook on an average day, up 189 million or 18 percent compared to last year,” said CFO David Wehner in Facebook’s earnings conference call. “1.86 billion people used Facebook during the month of December, up 269 million or 17 percent compared to last year.”

In another Asia milestone, Facebook has surpassed US$2 in revenue per user – US$2.07, to be precise. But that’s far below the money it makes from people in Europe and the US.

Facebook’s overall revenue – which is mainly from advertising – hit a record high of US$8.8 billion from October to December last year. Its revenue from users across Asia has doubled in the past 15 months.

Facebook hit US$10.2 billion in profit in 2016, well up on 2015’s US$3.7 billion.

WhatsApp also hit a new high with 1.2 billion active users each month. “50 billion messages are sent through WhatsApp every day,” added Mark Zuckerberg on the call.