Facebook Q1 Earnings: Social Network Tries to Prove Mobile Is Paying Off

Roughly a year after its messy, horrible, no good initial public offering, Facebook touted its progress to Wall Street with the release of its first quarter earnings.

In particular, the social network set out to prove that its mobile strategy, something it has been faulted for lacking, was beginning to pay off. Facebook reported that mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 30 percent of its overall advertising sales during the first three months of 2013, up from 23 percent in the previous quarter.

Overall revenue for the quarter was $1.46 billion, which topped the expectations of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Wall Street number crunchers had projected the company would report $1.44 billion in revenue. That was an increase of roughly 46 percent from the approximately $1 billion in revenue the company reported during the first quarter of 2012.

Also read: Facebook Turns News Feed Into 'Personalized Newspaper'

Yet, the company had $219 million in net income, or 9 cents a share, which narrowly missed projections. For the same period last year, Facebook reported earnings of $205 million, or 9 cents a share.

"We've made a lot of progress in the first few months of the year," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. "We have seen strong growth and engagement across our community and launched several exciting products."

Also read: Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Hitting 1B Users: 'It's Incredible' (Video)

In a chest-pumping that might send a shiver through the spine of Google Plus and other aspiring social networks, Facebook said it now boasts 1.11 billion monthly active users and approximately 665 million daily active users.

In addition, its photo-sharing acquisition Instagram reached 100 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2013.

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