Facebook's quarterly revenue not upto expectations

Facebook's quarterly revenue and user growth disappointed investors amid a challenging year for a company navigating data misuse, misinformation and election meddling on its platform.

Total revenue jumped 33% to $13.73 billion for the three months ending in September, but fell short of analysts' expectations. User figures also missed analysts estimates. Monthly active users totaled 2.27 billion as of September 30, an increase of 10% year-over-year.

Meanwhile, daily active users for the month averaged 1.49 billion — an increase of 9% year-over-year, according to Facebook.

Analysts, however, were expecting 2.29 billion monthly users and 1.51 billion daily users.

It also was only an incremental increase over the previous quarter. Daily active users averaged 1.47 billion for June 2018, according to Facebook, and monthly active users totaled 2.23 billion as of June 30.

Shares fluctuated in extended trading on Tuesday, but were up over 4% after the earnings call. But it's not all bad news for Facebook. Earnings of $1.76 per share topped Wall Street's estimates.

The company also said it estimates over 2.6 billion people now use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger each month. In addition, more than 2 billion people use at least one of these Facebook-owned apps each day on average.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said people increasingly want to share ephemerally through Stories or privately via direct messaging.

Zuckerberg said the company's security systems will get "to where we generally think they should be at" by the end of 2019. But he cautioned that even then, the systems won't be perfect.

However, Zuckerberg acknowledged that ads in Stories don't make Facebook as much money as ads in News Feed, and revenue growth may be "slower" during the transition period, which he compared to the shift to mobile from desktop. He also noted that while WhatsApp and Instagram Stories "immediately took off," it's been a slower start for the format on Facebook.