The 10 top-searched stocks of 2014: Facebook is No. 2
Facebook has long been popular with its users who now total well over a billion. It's been a tougher sell for investors following a beleaguered 2012 IPO. That all seemed to change in 2014. The stock was up more than 40%, thanks in large part to mobile. No wonder Facebook was second on Yahoo's list of most-searched stocks in 2014.
“Facebook continues to do really nothing wrong,” said Yahoo Finance’s Jeff Macke. “Nobody knows how much the company’s gonna be worth because no one knows what mobile ads are worth. But it’s a stunner to old guys like me who don’t really use Facebook as much as other young people, but it’s a big deal. People are using it on mobile platforms. They’re using it for mobile ads. The company is insanely profitable.”
That’s a far cry from Facebook in 2012. When the stock went public, people were wondering if the “word of mouth at scale” ads Facebook kept touting would ever work. No one knew if mobile ads would ever really make money. Then in the summer of 2013, Facebook reported an earnings beat the proved mobile ads really could make money. It opened the floodgates for other social media companies (hi, Twitter! TWTR) that thought they could also make money on mobile ads.
So far though, Facebook remains king. “They are making money on mobile like nobody else,” said Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman. He points out that while critics may say young people are falling out of love with Facebook in favor of hipper social media tools, you just can’t ignore that profitability. “That positions them for the future.”
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Plus, whatever young people think, Facebook has a solid user base, popular beyond journalists and celebrities (again, Twitter.) “Everybody uses Facebook so it’s not a surprise that people were searching for the stock,” said Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task. “You use the product, you want to know if you should buy the stock.”
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Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Mike Santoli took it one step further: “This is the year that Facebook became everything to everybody.”
But that doesn’t mean Facebook can coast into 2015. Santoli points out that Facebook’s next challenge will be figuring out a way for social media to stay relevant, likely by emphasizing shares of news and content.
“It’s gotta dominate media. It’s gotta basically be the new television networks, all three of them rolled into one,” said Santoli. No small feat, but so far Mark Zuckerberg has had no problem proving the haters wrong, even in a hoodie.
More of the top-searched stocks of 2014: