Facebook’s parent company, Meta, announced that it had lost about one million active daily users in the last quarter. It was the 1st drop ever in users for the social media giant, Axios reported.
After the depressing numbers were announced, Meta’s stock fell over twenty percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. The drop in numbers cost the company’s market capitalization more than $200 billion.
It also directly impacted Zuckerberg himself.
As stated in the Daily Mail, Zuckerberg has over 398 million shares of Meta. So when the stock dove, it took $29 billion from his net worth.
Zuckerberg told investors that the competition from TikTok is making Facebook have to concentrate more on Reels, its short video product, The Washington Post reported.
“People have so many choices of what they want to spend their time on, and apps like TikTok are growing very fast,” Zuckerberg said. “This is the reason why our attention on Reels is so important over the long term.”
Facebook’s growth in the United States and Europe has not been good over the past few years, but usually the company can keep adding users.
Now, losing users on its main social network, the Big Tech giant has turned to the “metaverse.” Zuckerberg is hoping it will be the next major technological development.
The Meta’s Reality Labs, that develop virtual reality hardware, lost 10 billion dollars in 2021, according to Axios.
Meta reported $10.3 billion in profits in the 4th quarter, less than the expectations of $10.9 billion and a drop compared to 2020.
Kim Forrest, chief investment officer, said that the company going in a new direction while making less revenue is “not a match made in heaven.”
Zuckerberg agreed.
“Even though our direction is clear, our path ahead isn’t quite perfectly defined,” he told investors.
But, Metas trends were not all negative.
Instagram, messenger and WhatsApp, all under the Meta umbrella, kept adding users. The number of people that logged in to Facebook monthly also increased — it was the number of daily users that dropped.
