In a quarterly financial report released on Thursday, July 30th, Facebook is reported to have nearly doubled and added users, despite ad boycott and the COVID-19.

The technology giant is said to have recorded a profit of $5.2 billion on $18.7 billion in revenue in the recently ended quarter, and a monthly rise of 2.7 billion.

Shares in the company rose by six percent in after-market trades following the release of the earnings figures.

According to a statement made by the company Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, this was a strong quarter for the company. “The number of people using the tech giant’s overall “family” of apps including WhatsApp and Messenger each month topped three billion,” he said.

The importance of technology during this crisis cannot be overemphasized. In a bid to curb the spread of the virus, nationwide lockdowns were issued worldwide with technology being the only medium to the outside world.

As people were social distancing, technology became a major source of entertainment, information, making money and connecting with people. Social media apps recorded a surge in users posing as a new form of communication, entertainment, networking, and discovery of  new business ideas and opportunities.

All this wouldn’t have been made possible two decades ago when the internet was nascent and Facebook didn’t even exist. 

With the surge in users, it is expected that social media platforms and other technology firms would record double profit in the second quarter of the year.

According to Zuckerberg, Facebook expects as much as half of its employees to be working from home on a long-term basis in the next five to ten years. He also addressed the issue of hate speech and boycotting ads, stating that his company is taking actions to curb hateful content.

Zuckerberg said he was “troubled” by calls for regulators to make it more difficult to target advertising, saying such a move would hurt businesses trying to connect with customers, especially during economic turmoil.