Since its inception, Facebook user growth has essentially turned to the right. But on Wednesday, it reported a decline in the world’s daily users in the first quarter and lower-than-expected advertising growth that plunged its inventory by about 20 percent. The sharp drop in stock prices that immediately wiped out about $ 200 billion in market value says that changing Facebook’s name to Meta isn’t enough to distract investors from core social media business issues. is showing.
Not only was Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users nearly flat in the previous quarter, but the main Facebook app lost 1 million daily users in North America, accounting for the majority of advertising revenue. That decline has led to an overall decline in daily Facebook users around the world. This was said by a company spokesperson to be the first consecutive decline in the history of the company.
That drop to 1.929 billion daily users from 1.93 billion the prior quarter is likely a reflection of Facebook`s increasing lack of relevance with young people. Meta doesn’t break out Instagram’s user numbers, but daily users across all of its apps barely nudged higher to 2.82, adding just 10 million users from the third quarter.
Meta is still insanely profitable. Last year alone, it made nearly $ 40 billion in profits, primarily from advertising. But it’s also costing billions of dollars to Reality Labs, the division responsible for Quest VR headsets, VR software, upcoming AR glasses, and other Metaverse-related initiatives. The division lost $ 10.2 billion last year and reported revenue of $ 2.3 billion. This is a statistic that includes reductions in quest sales and VR app purchases. Meta hasn’t announced the number of quests sold yet, but third-party estimates suggest that it’s about 10 million units.
