Facebook profits nearly triple, mobile soars

New York - Facebook profits nearly tripled to $642m in the first quarter on a 72% surge in revenues, helped by gains in mobile users and mobile advertising, the company reported on Wednesday.

Advertising revenues on the huge social network were up 82% from a year ago, the company said.

Of that, earnings from mobile ads comprised 59% of that, compared with 53% in the fourth quarter of last year.

Mobile users continued to dominate the growth picture for the company: daily active users were up 21% from a year ago to 802 million, and of them mobile users totaled 609 million, a year-on-year gain of 43%.

Monthly active users meanwhile rose to 1.28 billion, one billion of them on mobile.

"Facebook's business is strong and growing, and this quarter was a great start to 2014," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.