Facebook held its annual shareholder meeting yesterday (June 11), when it revealed just how successful some of its top products have become.
Like its standalone Facebook Messenger app, which has now reached 700 million users, 100 million of whom have joined in the past three months.. Recently, Facebook added payments to Messenger, which shows how the social media company is going to monetize the service. Zuckerberg also mentioned that WhatsApp now has more than 800 million people using it.
At its meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it will use Messenger as a platform to build more services.
“You’ll see more of that in terms of different audiences and types of content and a continual aiming to be the best way to share the type of content that’s important to [users] in any way that’s important to them,” Zuckerberg told the group, according to The Wall Street Journal’s report of the day.
Also at the annual meeting was a proposal that would allow Facebook’s stockholders one vote per share, but that proposal was shut down, Fortune reported. Zuckerberg currently has a 55 percent personal stake.
“What we’re asking for is for Facebook to recapitalize the shares so that each share gets one vote,” Northstar Asset Management founder and CEO Julie Goodridge told CNBC. “I am convinced that shareholders need to be able to have some sort of a say in terms of appropriate corporate governance, especially auditors, who’s sitting on the board and other issues around sustainability and you know, electioneering contributions, that sort of thing.”
As for other protocol measures, its eight directors were re-elected, with includes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, as well as Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Outside of its Messenger chatter, Zuckerberg also talked about Facebook’s initiative to help connect more people to the Internet — which in turn could connect more people to Facebook.
“So we talk about things like internet.org which is this effort to help spread Internet access around the world because in order for people to be able to communicate, I mean stay in touch with people and enjoy all the economic benefits that the Internet brings they’re going to have to be on the Internet and that’s not the case today,” Zuckerberg said, according to Seeking Alpha. “Actually only a little more than a third of the world’s population has Internet access. So we’re working on a long-term project to be able to drive more Internet access.”
Other big Facebook news that came out of the week included the announcement that Facebook was piloting its news feed Buy Buttons. That option would enable Shopify merchants who run Facebook pages to promote their post ads (organically or with a cost) and include a Buy Button. Facebook users can then buy in one click if their payment details are already registered. Otherwise, they simply complete the purchase via their credit or debit card details.
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