It reported $1.5bn (£1bn) in earnings for the period between January and March, compared to $512m last year.

As well as enticing advertisers to new products like live video, Facebook boosted sales on existing services.

Facebook also proposed a new class of shares, which will allow founder Mark Zuckergerg to sell his shares without losing control of the company.

The company said the move will "encourage Mr Zuckerberg to remain in an active leadership role at Facebook".

Facebook shares rose over 9% in after-hours trading.

Going mobile

Sales for the quarter reached $5.3bn up from $3.5bn last year.

Mobile advertising made up 82% of Facebooks overall advertising revenue, up from 73% at the same time last year.

Total monthly active users (MAU) increased 15% from a year earlier to 1.65 billion, which was ahead of analysts expectations.

With Apple's iffy results yesterday, and the now-broken-record of Twitter continuing to struggle, it's Facebook taking the hopes of the tech world on its shoulders, and flourishing.

Wall Street is extremely tough on the world's biggest social network, a company which suffers from its own success. Even when Facebook warns about an achille's heel, it seems to overcome it.

Remember when investors were worried about the transition to mobile? Well, it made $5.2bn from advertising in the last quarter - 82% of that was from mobile users. Some achille's heel.

I'd been hoping we'd learn a little about the early sales of the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset which went on sale towards the end of the quarter.

Sadly Facebook chose not to share specific figures on that.On a call with investors Facebook said it intended to continue buying other companies, but only those offering services that could be "ubiquitous".

Facebook has invested heavily in other firms - in 2012 it paid $1bn for the photo-sharing site Instagram.

But it is hard for investors to judge the success of such deals, as Facebook has not detailed earnings from acquired firms.

New shares

The announcement of the new share structure comes four months after Mr Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced they would give away 99% of their wealth.

The couple made the announcement after the birth of their daughter Max in December.

In a letter to Max on Facebook the pair said they would give the majority of their fortune to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative where it would be used to "advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation".

Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Chan plan to make the donations over the course of their lives. Under Facebook's current shareholder structure Mr Zuckerberg can't do that without giving up control of the company he built.

(BBC)