Negativity Impacts Time Spent With Facebook

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted his yearly New Year's resolution, previously usually a cute personal goal like learning Chinese or wearing a tie every day, he instead spoke to something more existential about Facebook, according to AdAge. He indicated that he knows the site can be a source of discontent and pledged changes so it inspires a greater sense of well-being among users.

"The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do," he wrote, "whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent."

In the last quarter of 2017, time spent on Facebook every day declined by 5 percent, or 50 million hours, a drop the company attributed to its intentional efforts to prioritize more meaningful content. But it also saw the number of North Americans on the platform fall for the first time, to 184 million from 185 million in the third quarter.

That didn't mean trouble for the ad business—far from it. Facebook finished the year with $40 billion in revenue, up 47 percent from 2016. Even as people spent less time on Facebook in the fourth quarter, marketers spent more money there—47 percent more.

Facebook's issues haven't affected brands' appetite for it, says Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. "It has not gotten to the point where a brand is toxic by association for being there."

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