Since its inception, Facebook’s user growth has been mostly upward. But on Wednesday, it reported its first-ever quarterly decline in daily user numbers worldwide, along with weaker-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock down about 20%.
The massive stock plunge, which instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook’s rebranding to Meta isn’t enough.
Indeed, Facebook has lost 1 million daily users in North America, where it makes the most money from advertising.
The decline led to an overall decrease in the number of daily Facebook users worldwide, which a company spokesperson said is the first sequential decline in the company’s history.
This drop to 1.929 billion daily users from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter is likely a reflection of Facebook’s growing lack of relevance among young people.
Meta does not detail the number of Instagram users, but daily users of all its apps barely increased to 2.82, adding just 10 million users in the third quarter.
Meta is still hugely profitable: it made nearly $40 billion in profits last year, mostly from advertising.
Last December, Facebook was named the worst company of the year after 12 turbulent months of controversy, according to a survey by Yahoo Finance. It received 50% more votes as the worst company of the year than runner-up Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. On the other hand, Microsoft was crowned best company of this year.
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