January 2014

Facebook isn't adding users the way it once was. But its business is accelerating.

The world's largest social network showed that it can generate more money out of each user, as it posted a 63% increase in revenue and an eightfold increase in profit for the fourth quarter. The results far exceeded investor expectations, sending Facebook shares up 12% in after-hours trading to $59.98, near their all-time high. The stock finished 4 p.m. trading at $53.53, down 2.9%, ahead of the earnings report. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said Facebook's results reflected data that showed advertisers that Facebook ads work. In a recent test at Coca-Cola pitting the beverage giant's Facebook ads against its TV ads, "we were the most efficient," she said. Facebook said mobile-advertising accounted for 53% of revenue in the fourth quarter, up from 49% in the third quarter and 23% a year earlier. Market researcher eMarketer said Facebook grabbed 18% of the $16.7 billion global mobile-advertising market last year, second only to Google's 53%. The company said 1.23 billion users logged into the service at least once a month during the quarter, up roughly 3%, or 40 million users, from the previous three months. More than 61% of those people -- 757 million -- used Facebook daily, it said.

Technology had the spotlight in President Obama’s State of the Union address.

“Today in America ... an entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech startup, and did her part to add to the more than 8 million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years," said President Barack Obama. And that was just the second sentence. Innovation has always been a major talking point in the annual SOTU speech, but last night Obama wove technology into several of the overarching themes of his message: employment, education, and the global economy. But whether these mentions were just talking points in a speech or grounds for actual change remain on a case-by-case basis. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education has been the battle cry of education-oriented politicians as of late, but in the SOTU, President Obama touched on a different aspect of education: wireless access.

Egyptian prosecutors said they would charge 20 employees of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network with a range of offenses including joining a terrorist organization and broadcasting false news.

The development marks a sharp legal escalation against dissenting voices in the media. The military-backed government that ousted President Mohammed Morsi in July has cracked down on his Muslim Brotherhood political organization and on media outlets that offer independent coverage, observers say. The network, with its Arabic and English broadcasts, has provided a rare critical voice in its coverage of the aftermath of the coup. Al Jazeera has denied any bias and has demanded that previously detained members of its staff be released. In a statement, Al Jazeera said it hadn't been formally notified of the charges against its journalists by Egyptian authorities but called the allegations "absurd, baseless and false." Prosecutors, in a statement, said the 16 defendants who are Egyptian would be charged with joining a banned terrorist organization, an apparent reference to the Brotherhood, which the government has declared illegal. Prosecutors said the four foreigners, from Australia, Britain and the Netherlands, aided the banned group with funding and equipment to broadcast false news.