Facebook Is No Longer Growing At A Rapid Pace

Facebook is no longer Growing at a Rapid Pace

The world's most popular social network is not expanding in size at all.

Meta released fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, showing financial numbers that disappointed Wall Street to the degree that the company's stock price plummeted by as much as 20%. As soon as the numbers were released, shares of the company, which is still trading under the ticker symbol FB, dropped by 20 percent.

In addition to confirming some projected patterns, such as Apple's iOS privacy safeguards reducing ad revenue, Meta's financial figures for the previous quarter also revealed the unusual reality that Facebook, Meta's primary service, is losing users.

Third and Fourth Quarters of 2021

During the third and fourth quarters of 2021, the number of monthly active users (MAUs) on Facebook remained constant at 2.9 billion users. Adding insult to injury, the company's daily active users (DAUs) fell from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion during the same period, marking a first for the company, which is known for its "growth at all costs" approach to business.

Some of this should come as no surprise. For the most part, Facebook is a mature product (to put it simply), and the company can only sign up a limited number of humans in various marketplaces throughout the world. And the company is putting more focus than ever before on its "family" of services, which includes WhatsApp and Instagram, both of which are younger products that have a long way to go before achieving that level of saturation in the market.

While user growth slowed during the quarter, the firm formerly known as Facebook announced its plan to change its name to "Facebook Metaverse" in order to place greater emphasis on immersive virtual experiences.

The net result for Meta is that it keeps control over the world's largest social network. What about the news that is not so good? A user slowdown was expected, but it is another another indication that Facebook — and by extension, Facebook's "Family of Apps," as Meta refers to it — is more of a vestige of the past than a brightly lit beacon of the future.

We will keep you updated on Facebook expansion and stocks.