Facebook Hit a Mind-Boggling Milestone This Week
You know what’s cooler than having hundreds of millions of people use your product every day? Having a billion people use it in one day.
That’s what happened for Facebook for the first time on Monday when more than a billion people logged on to the social network, according to a post on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s page. That’s one in seven people worldwide.
That means that a billion people potentially saw the ads that help generate the revenue that has powered Facebook’s growth. In particular, Facebook has been at the forefront of the shift toward earning ad dollars via online video, the fastest-growing digital advertising category.
Related: Will Facebook Kill the News Media or Save It?
Zuckerberg didn’t mention revenue in his post. Instead, he wrote that he is proud of the community built by the social network and said that connecting the world is making it a better place. “It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values.”
The milestone comes as the social network has been moving aggressively to monitor user habits and expand its product offerings to include instant messaging, photo-sharing and now a new virtual assistant. It has also explored moving into the e-wallet space and is reportedly looking into developing a credit rating system based on a user’s network.
While a billion users a day is nothing to scoff at, the company—as always—is dreaming bigger. Last month, Facebook finished construction of a drone that it hopes will provide Internet access to remote parts of the world. That way everyone everywhere can be wished a “Happy Birthday” by 300 people they haven’t spoken to in years.
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
