If it ain’t digital, it ain’t the economy, stupid

Facebook has just announced its quarterly results: 15% growth on the same period last year, 17% more users connecting every day, and a 22% increase in the number of smartphone users of the social network. What’s more, the company’s quarterly turnover was $5.8 billion with profits of $1.5 billion, way ahead of the analysts’ predictions.

Facebook’s spectacular results sit alongside those of Amazon and Alphabet, which have also enjoyed highly profitable quarters. Amazon has been around since 1994, and now, exactly at the moment when it is immersed in its most ambitious expansion program, openly competing with the big distributors and logistics companies and having established itself as a major provider of digital infrastructure, it is starting to see some really interesting financial results.

Alphabet, founded in 1999 and on the markets since 2004, has too reported spectacular results, sending its share price to an all-time maximum and close to $800 per share, totally debunking the Cassandras who were predicting apocalypse (sure, digital advertising is a big fat mess now, but Google is navigating that mess amazingly well).

As symbols of the burgeoning digital economy, these are far from small fry. Facebook, founded in 2004 and on the stock exchange since 2012, has been growing even faster, and as its 1% sticker shows, is only just starting out…

And if you still think that Facebook is just a place to post snaps and catch up with what family and friends are up to, or that Google is just a search engine, or that Amazon sells books online, you are living in the dark ages. The digital economy is no longer the “new economy”: it’s the real economy, in other words, if it ain’t digital, it ain’t the economy, stupid.

(En español, aquí)