The company said mobile ad revenue was 88% of all advertising revenue, up from 84% past year.

It made $10.1 billion in profits over a three-month time, 49 percent in excess of the same quarter in 2016.

Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status, 2 ephemeral messaging products Facebook mostly cribbed from Snapchat, have actually both now exceeded 300 million monthly active users, making them nearly twice as popular as all of the Snapchat. CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that focusing on security will definitely have an impact on the company's bottom line, stating that "We're serious about preventing abuse on our platforms".

Instagram also hit a big milestone this quarter, now with 500 million daily actives, shared Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder CEO of Facebook, during a conference call.

Protecting the Facebook community is more important than "maximizing our profits," Zuckerberg said on the call.

"None of that matters if our services are used in ways that don't bring people closer together - or if the foundation of our society is undermined by foreign interference", he said in the post.

The social network continues to hinge its growth efforts on the smartphone and, while virtual reality (VR) and Oculus are part of the narrative going forward, the present is really all about video.

CFO David Wehner noted that the operating expenses will surge as the company spends more on security and original content.

But the stock fell in after-hours trading after Zuckerberg's warning.

If you think back to about two years ago, Facebook had about 12,000 people and regarded this diminutive size, compared to players such as Apple and Google, as a kind of virtue, enabling it to be nimble and stick close to its start-up roots.

Facebook says that 10,000 people work on safety and security today, and it will double those teams by the end of next year.

Security is clearly a major and costly issue for Facebook.

Facebook was at the center of news today, affirming in front of the lawmakers in Washington DC about how state participants like Russian Federation used its platform to attempt and change the outcome of the 2016 USA election.

Zuckerberg said Facebook's recently launched Watch tab is an example of how it is capitalizing on this opportunity.

Business Insider reported Facebook explaining that the changes were due to "a new methodology for duplicate accounts that included improvements to the data signals we rely on".

This will start with the removal of duplicate accounts.

Trust engineers to find a silver lining in stormy clouds.