Facebook Daily Users Decline For First Time In 18 Years As Shares Sink 20%

Facebook’s global daily active users declined from the previous quarter for the first time in eighteen years to 1.929 billion from 1.930 billion.

Investors King gathered that the company’s shares in other social media platforms, including Twitter, Snap and Pinterest, also fell sharply in extended trading.

According to Reuters, the 18-year-old tech giant, which also faces pressure from platforms like TikTok and Google’s YouTube, said it expected slowing revenue growth in the coming quarter due to increased competition for users’ time and a shift of engagement toward such features as its short video offering Reels, which generate less revenue.

Meta said it faced hits from Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) privacy changes to its operating system, which have made it harder for brands to target and measure their ads on Facebook and Instagram. It also cited macroeconomic issues like supply-chain disruptions.

Investors King recalls that Meta, owner of the second-largest digital ad platform in the world after Google, had previously warned its advertising business faced “significant uncertainty” in the fourth quarter.

Meta’s chief financial officer, Dave Wehner, told analysts on a conference call that the impact of Apple’s privacy changes could be “in the order of $10 billion” for 2022.

According to IBES data from Refinitiv, the company’s total revenue, the bulk of which comes from ad sales, rose to $33.67 billion in the fourth quarter from $28.07 billion a year earlier, beating analysts’ estimates of $33.40 billion,

“I’m encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce, and virtual reality, and we’ll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse”, the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said in the earnings release.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, Inc, is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California.

The company is the parent organization of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among other subsidiaries.