Facebook achieves milestone with 2 billion daily active users, but Meta still facing problems
Facebook remains a popular and successful social media platform, with a user base exceeding 2 billion, yet its financial report presents a less favorable outlook.
Meta's (META) recent earnings report showed that as of December 31, 2022, Facebook had a daily active user count of 2 billion, a slight increase from the previous quarter's 1.98 billion users and a 4% rise from the previous year.
"Our community continues to grow and I'm pleased with the strong engagement across our apps. Facebook just reached the milestone of 2 billion daily actives," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO stated in the Meta Q4 2022 earnings report.. "The progress we're making on our AI discovery engine and Reels are major drivers of this. Beyond this, our management theme for 2023 is the 'Year of Efficiency' and we're focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization."
The monthly active users of Meta stands at 2.96 billion, showing a 2% increase compared to the previous year. This figure is consistent with the Q3 2022 report and higher than the 2.93 billion reported in Q2 2022.
Even if Facebook has 2 billion users, revenue falls 4%
Despite a decline in Meta's revenue over the past year, the company's revenue for the last quarter of 2022 was slightly better than expected at $32.2 billion, although it was down 4% from the previous year.
As reported at Engadget, during an analyst call, Zuckerberg stated that the company will continue to focus on efficiency by proactively cutting underperforming or less crucial projects. The CEO added that generative AI will be a focus for Meta in the coming year.
“Generative AI is an extremely exciting new area with so many different applications,” Zuckerberg stated. “And one of my goals for Meta is to build on our research to become a leader in generative AI.”
Reality Labs of Meta has become pricier for the Zuckerberg
Meta's investments in the metaverse are still resulting in significant losses, with its Reality Labs division, which manages VR, AR, and metaverse projects, losing $4.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 and almost $14 billion for the entire year.
The company has once again indicated that it anticipates further losses from Reality Labs in the upcoming year.
