Since Facebook’s inception, the platform has shown mere growth. But that changed for the first time this week. The company announced during the discussion of its quarterly results that it is losing daily users. Revenue is also somewhat disappointing, causing the value of its shares to fall by twenty percent.
As a result, Facebook is losing a market value of over $200 billion. The number of users on the platform, Instagram and WhatsApp remained almost the same compared to the previous quarter. However, over one million daily users of the social medium disappeared in North America.
Facebook continues its decline
This may be because Facebook has become less relevant to young users. For Instagram, the company does not release any figures. Despite all this, Meta is still mega profitable. Last year the company made a profit of a whopping forty billion dollars, for example.
Meanwhile, parent company Meta is also investing billions. That money goes to Reality Labs, the business unit of is responsible for Oculus VR, VR software, AR glasses and other metaverse-like ventures. This division accounted for a loss of $10.2 billion (with revenue of $2.3 billion).
Meta in the future
So it looks like Meta as a company can start to lean less on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for profits. Not that those products are now causing red numbers; but it is clear that the decline has begun. Things seem to have stalled for now, and that’s a scenario you should be happy about as a company.
It’s no secret that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is betting high on the metaverse. This is the future for Meta, but it requires investment. Meta has plenty of money and can go on for a few more years, but then the question remains to what extent investors see this as a good thing. Time will tell.