Facebook profit surged in the final three months of last year as people enduring the holidays in a pandemic turned to the leading social network for work and pleasure, the lcompany said Wednesday.

Facebook reported profit of $11.2 billion on revenue of $28 billion, increases of 53 percent and 33 percent when compared to the same period the prior year.

"We had a strong end to the year as people and businesses continued to use our services during these challenging times," said Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook said its core social network had some 2.8 billion users at the end of December while 3.3 billion people used at least one of its "family" of apps including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

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