THE NEWS WRAP: Facebook beats second quarter predictions – StartupSmart
Despite rumours that it’s only used by embarrassing parents nowadays, Facebook has beaten financial predictions for the second quarter.
Facebook announced $US4.04 billion in revenue and user growth of 3.47%. The social networking site now has 1.49 billion monthly users.
However, growth did fall slightly from 3.6% recorded last quarter.
Mobile now makes up 76% of Facebook’s total ad revenue, and there are 968 million daily active users.
“This was another strong quarter for our community,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says.
“Engagement across our family of apps keeps growing, and we remained focused on improving the quality of our services.”
Twilio scores $130 million investment
Cloud-based communication service provider startup Twilio has closed a Series E funding round worth US$130 million.
As Fortune reports, the company has now raised about US$240 million and is officially a unicorn startup, worth more than $1 billion.
Twilio sells customised application programming interfaces that can have communication features embedded in them, and is used by the likes of Uber, Coca-Cola and Home Depot.
Microsoft wants to stream PC games to Xbox
Microsoft has signalled plans to allow PC games to be streamed onto the Xbox One, as Windows 10 officially debuts today.
The new updates allow Xbox One games to be streamed to PCs, but in an interview with The Verge, Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer says they are planning to allow for this to happen the other way around too.
“In terms of where we want to go with our platform, those are absolutely in scope of things that we want to do,” Spencer says.
“We understand if you’re going to go PC to Xbox, we need to get keyboard and mouse working completely so you could play those games.”
Overnight
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 121.12, rising 0.69% overnight to 17,751.39. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US73 cents.
Raising your first round of capital? Starting a crowdfunding campaign? Want to grow your business with Instagram? StartupSmart School can help.