Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks during a press conference in London, Tuesday Jan. 21, 2020. Facebook says it plans to hire 1,000 more staff in Britain, mainly for its technology and harmful content teams, and that it will add the new roles by the end of the year, which will bring its U.K. workforce to more than 4,000. (Dominic Lipinski/PA via AP)
LONDON (AP) --
Facebook said Tuesday it plans to hire 1,000 more staff in Britain, mainly for its technology and harmful content teams.
The U.S. tech company said Tuesday that it will add the new roles by the end of the year, bringing its U.K. workforce to more than 4,000.
More than half of the new jobs will be in technology-focused roles such as software engineering.
There will also be a "large number" of jobs working on building tools to detect and remove harmful content from Facebook and its other platforms, which include WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. The company did not give an exact number.
Facebook is devoting more effort to keeping harmful content such as spam and abusive material off its sites as authorities put more pressure on the big tech companies to better police their platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg talks about the Orion AR glasses during the Meta Connect conference on Sept. 25, 2024, in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)
Meta Platforms Inc. posted sharply higher profit and revenue for its fourth quarter on Wednesday, thanks to higher ad revenue on its social media properties, sending its shares up in after-hours trading even as it forecast increasing expenses on its artificial intelligence efforts.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects 2025 to "be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant."
The Menlo Park, California-based company earned $20.83 billion, or $8.02 per share, in the October-December quarter. That's up 49% from $14.02 billion, or $5.33 per share, in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue grew 21% to $48.39 billion from $40.11 billion.
Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $6.76 per share on revenue of $47 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
"We continue to make good progress on AI, glasses, and the future of social media," Zuckerberg said in a statement.
For the current quarter, Meta said expects revenue of $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion. Analysts are expecting revenue at the high end of that range — $41.68 billion.
The company also said it expects expenses in the range of $114 billion to $119 billion, driven by infrastructure costs and employee compensation. Meta had 74,067 employees as of Dec. 31, up 10% from a year earlier.
"Meta's Q4 performance underscores the company's resilience in a still-uncertain digital ad market. By beating both earnings and revenue estimates, they've demonstrated that cost discipline and efficiency gains are paying dividends," said Jesse Cohen, an analyst with Investing.com. "However, the real headline is their commitment to aggressive capital expenditures.... Read More
