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User growth
User growth has been a strong point for Facebook. In Facebook's third quarter, the company's monthly and daily active users on its core Facebook social network increased 16% and 17%, respectively, putting monthly and daily active users at about 1.8 billion and 1.2 billion.
Further, Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger now each have over 1 billion monthly active users. And Facebook's Instagram was at 500 million monthly active users when the company reported third-quarter results but has since announced that its monthly active users have hit 600 million .
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Looking ahead to 2017
Finally, given that it was probably Facebook's outlook for big spending and slower growth in 2017 that caused a sell-off in the stock price from around $130 to as low as $115 in the weeks following the social network's third-quarter financial results, investors may want to tune in to any updates management has for its expectations next year. Management's forecast for a significant deceleration in growth in the second half of 2017, as well as management's expectations for 2017 to be a big investment year, lacked any concrete ranges, failing to give investors a more specific idea of what to expect. Maybe when Facebook reports fourth-quarter results, management will provide more specific expectations for 2017.
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Daniel Sparks owns shares of Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .