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Facebook Daily Active Users on Decline by 1M/day in 2021!

Facebook Daily Active Users

Does a decline in Facebook daily active users means the end of Facebook?

Probably Not. Read here.

Meta latest report for Q4 2021 is out, which shows a promising increase in revenue, rise in monthly active users, however, a worrisome decline in Facebook daily active users.

Facebook Monthly Active users

Meta’s main social app Facebook rose by just 2 million monthly actives from Q3, the slowest quarter-on-quarter growth rate in its history. It’s a red flag, however not the one that requires immediate redressal.

The more disturbing fact (especially for digital marketers) is the decline in Facebook daily active users, and the numbers are shocking. It’s almost 1 million or 10 lakh people in one day! Look at the screenshot below –

Facebook daily active users

As you can see here, Facebook did add users in the Asia Pacific and European regions, but overall, it lost a million active users.

Now, some of you might not be stunned with the numbers as we all know that the youth in more inclined towards new age picturesque platforms like TikTok and Instagram. But, from a marketers point of view, the numbers are huge – That could have been the next customer for a business on Facebook, had these numbers been rising. A decline in Facebook daily active users has a direct correlation with the efficiency of ads running on Facebook.

A 1M decline in Facebook daily active users means that over 10 lakh people decided, not use check Facebook every single day!

Now, does that ring a bell!?

Not so much for META! Here’s why –

Meta’s more keen to highlight this stat instead, its ‘Family of Apps’ usage, which combines total unique users across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Family monthly active people

As you can above, across all of its apps, Meta actually added a million more users, which likely means that WhatsApp and Instagram are still growing.  Meta doesn’t break out individual usage stats for these apps, but broadly speaking, it maintains at least some growth momentum, and its apps are still the most used social media platforms by far, with close to 3 billion DAU.

What’s surprising! – Facebook saw a decline, especially over the Christmas period, when people are generally more active online.

In terms of revenue, Meta posted another strong result, bringing in $33.6 billion for the quarter. Have a look below –

Facebook’s revenue

Now there’s something exciting – for the first time, Meta has also provided full revenue split data between its apps and its Reality Labs division (AR/VR projects).

Facebook AR/VR revenue

As shown in the screenshot above, VR sales jumped in Q4, bringing in $877 million, which is only a small fraction of overall revenue for the company. But still, as it eyes the next stage of immersive connection, that’s another key element to keep in mind, and you can expect Meta to put even more focus on this as those sales continue to rise.

Seems like Meta is more inclined towards building a Meta-Verse and family bundles, rather than following a single platform/app approach. This is evident from the  advanced digital avatars, which could define your presence in the metaverse shift, with avatar tools that can now be used across Facebook, Horizon, Instagram and Messenger in a range of ways.

Facebook new avatars

If Meta can create the best, most customisable, most interoperable avatars, that could be a big step in better aligning users to its platforms, which is another advantage of the company’s massive scale, with these avatar tools already enabling new forms of connection in the world’s most used social apps.

In a nutshell, there’s quite a gap between the cup and the lip, however, as of now, Facebook daily active users declining should at least cause a stir in the Meta empire.

Did you contribute to the decline in Facebook daily active users? Do you log on to Facebook everyday? Let us know in comments below.

You can check out Meta’s compete report pertaining to decline in Facebook daily active users here.

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