Seems like my latest edition of The Longform had impeccable timing, as Facebook Meta has reported its first drop in daily active users ever. During their quarterly earnings call with investors, Facebook delivered the bad news. Which then tanked its stock by about 20%. Alex Heath at The Verge has more.
The massive stock drop, which instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook’s corporate rebrand to Meta isn’t enough to distract investors from the problems in its core business of social media. 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. That drop led to an overall decrease in daily users of Facebook globally, which a company spokesperson confirmed is the first sequential decline in the company’s history.
The Verge
A million users! That is not a lot of users in the scheme of how many globally use the service. However, that is nothing to shake a stick at. Meta has lots of headwinds pushing against it. From antitrust to a userbase that is more and more tuned toward an older crowd, it's tough to see how they can sustain their momentum indefinitely. Let's not forget that TikTok is THE place for the younger crowd right now and Snap has managed to fight off Meta's copy/paste efforts for years.
Meta may be trying to reposition itself as something it's not. However, there is one important factor they can never fully control: convincing people they're essential in their daily lives.
Forgive me if I forget to shed a tear for them.