Meta reports its first-ever sequential decline in global Facebook daily active users, falling from 1.930B to 1.929B QoQ
Facebook parent Meta's stock nosedives in after-hour trading as the company refocuses on the metaverse. — Facebook parent Meta's quarterly earnings report …
Washington Post
Context & Ripple Effects
The one-user sequential dip arrived alongside weak results and guidance that triggered Meta’s historic one-day market-value loss. It gave investors a concrete sign of pressure in Facebook’s core audience just as Meta was emphasizing the metaverse.
Subsequent coverage shows the concern broadened from user momentum to financial performance: Meta later reported its first year-over-year quarterly revenue decline before Family of Apps daily active people returned to growth in 2023.
First-order effects
Meta’s after-hours selloff immediately repriced the company around weaker Facebook engagement and the costs of its metaverse refocus.
Facebook’s core daily-user metric lost its prior growth signal, making Meta’s broader Family of Apps audience figures more important to its near-term narrative.
Second-order effects
Investors gained a clearer basis to challenge Meta’s metaverse spending against the performance of its established social products, a tension that later accompanied another sharp stock decline tied to concerns over excessive metaverse investment.
A slower Facebook user base raises the stakes for Meta’s ability to sustain revenue growth, which later weakened into a year-over-year quarterly decline.
Third-order effects
Meta’s reporting emphasis is likely to shift further from Facebook alone toward aggregate Family of Apps engagement and revenue performance, as the individual flagship platform matures.
The episode marks a more demanding capital-allocation standard for large consumer platforms: investment in new product areas faces closer comparison with the growth of the core business.
The trend: Maturing flagship social networks are pushing platform companies to defend expansion spending with broader ecosystem growth and clearer financial results.
Ironic that Facebook, after displacing traditional media, now has the same problem as radio, newspapers and TV, namely that fewer young people see it as relevant https://www.theverge.com/...
“Facebook showed for the first time on Wednesday how much of a money losing proposition its investment in virtual and augmented reality hardware is — the suite of products the company dubs the metaverse.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Confirmed that last quarter was the first-ever sequential decline in global Facebook daily users. It is loosing relevance with teens and spending $$$ on metaverse stuff that won't pay off for awhile https://www.theverge.com/...
This is for illustration: If Facebook has 195mm US DAUs and 75mm happen exclusively on iOS and 70% of those go dark to microtargeting by opting for tracking prevention then whether it's 196mm or 195mm DAUs matters a $&@# less than the 70% metric which they don't disclose. https:/…
“Not only was user growth across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp essentially flat last quarter, but the main Facebook app lost 1 million daily users in North America, where it makes the most money through advertising” https://twitter.com/...
Every day, the CMA's digital advertising market study looks more redundant and wrong. It was a huge mistake to focus on ad revenues rather than what users were doing. Ad revenues follow users, but seem to do so with a lag. The CMA ignored that. https://www.bbc.com/... https://twi…
I don't know if it justifies the crazy money wiped off Meta's stock today, but it is interesting that Facebook's user growth seems to be rolling over for the first time in ‘rest of world’ (or Africa, Latin America, & the Middle East). https://s21.q4cdn.com/... https://twitter.com…
There are around 5 billion people using the internet today. If Facebook's growth is peaking at less than 2 billion, that can only be seen as a major problem for the company https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Watching the parade of people out of Google recently, and the flatlining/decline at Facebook, is a reminder that sometimes the best cure for prolonged tech company dominance is prolonged dominance. Both companies seem adrift in mature markets.
i mean, facebook's still printing money, but this was interesting. also, in principle, i support them spending a fortune on R&D for new products, in practice, i think they're just lighting it on fire. https://www.theverge.com/...
Meta confirms that Facebook lost about half a million daily active users worldwide in the last three months of 2021, the first such decline in its history. Here's our full story on a landmark moment for a social network that may have peaked at last: https://www.washingtonpost.com…
@WillOremus DAU doesn't even matter here. Until they disclose the % of users who actually provide consent to their tracking (easiest to report is iOS ATT opt-out but then also EU where they're violating) then they are burying the most important metric to their business going forw…
FB for the first time is getting saturated in the world. Its growth has long been stagnant in developed countries. Problem for the future, but that won't mean much for revenues today - it makes so little money from LatAm and Africa. https://twitter.com/...
@WillOremus It's much worse than this. I'm sure they have data on how much actual activity each user has per day and it's probably declined dramatically in the last 1-2 years. At least among my circle, I'd say activity is barely 20-25% of what it was back then. Maybe less.