The world’s social media giant, Facebook has reported a sudden drop in the daily active users for the first time in its 18 years history.
Reports released by Meta, the parent company of Facebook revealed a sudden drop in its daily active users (DAUs) fell from 1.93 to 1.929 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Facebook’s sales growth had been hurt as the audience especially the youth has switched to rivals like TikTok and YouTube, said Mark Zuckerberg. This has really affected the firm’s revenue, however, shares of the company, still trading under the ticker symbol FB for now, plunged 20% as the numbers hit.
“People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,” he said. “And this is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term.”
The firm’s daily active user growth slowdown came in the same quarter Facebook announced that it would rebrand as a “metaverse” company, complete with plans to steer its resources toward building immersive virtual experiences.
Read Also: Minecraft Caves and Cliffs Update Still Loading In 2021The good news for Meta is that it still owns the world’s biggest social graph. The bad news? Even if a user slowdown was expected, it’s just one more thing making Facebook — and consequently, Facebook’s “Family of Apps,” as Meta calls it — look more like a relic from the past rather than a shining vision of the future.
While Facebook has been working on its own investments in video to compete with TikTok -owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance – it makes less money from those offerings than its traditional Facebook and Instagram feed.
According to Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, he was so confident the investments in video and virtual reality would pay off, as previous bets on mobile advertising and Instagram stories have.
But, he noted, the firm didn’t have to contend with a major rival during previous shifts in strategy.
“The teams are executing quite well and the product is growing very quickly,” he said. “The thing that is somewhat unique here is that TikTok is so big a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a fast rate.”
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