Facebook has reported record revenues of $2.5 billion from 750 million daily users, the social networking heavyweight said.
The end of quarter results, posted at the close of the US markets, showed a revenue rise of $1billion on the same period last year.
It was the third consecutive quarterly revenue increase – $2.585 billion up from the previous high of $2.016 billion, three months earlier.
More than 90 per cent of the revenue came from advertising – the last three months having included the period when Facebook began placing video adverts in users’ news feeds.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive, said: “It was a great end to the year for Facebook.
“We’re looking forward to our next decade and to helping connect the rest of the world.”
A total of 757 million people used the world’s biggest social media platform every day between October and December, up from 618 million the same time last year.
The number of monthly users accessing Facebook on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, rose to 556 million from 374 million, 12 months earlier.
It was a year in which Facebook attracted criticism from internet safety campaigners and British Prime Minister David Cameron after a slew of concerns about content and privacy settings.
The social networking site announced that users aged from 13 to 17 will now be able to switch their settings to share posts with anyone on the internet, rather than just their “friends’’ or ‘’friends of friends’’.
Children’s groups and internet safety experts denounced the move, saying it could leave young people more vulnerable to cyberbullying.
As of January, the company has about 1.2 billion monthly users.
Tony Jiang, strategist from digital agency TH_NK, said: “Facebook’s getting a lot of negative press right now, but its financial performance has been nothing short of stellar this year.
“It’s recently taken over from Yahoo as the second largest online advertising platform and is second only to Google. Early reports of high click through rates indicates that Facebook investors will have another good week.”