Facebook saw its daily active user count fall for the first time in 18 years as the social media platform’s shares slumped by over 20% in after-hours trading in New York. The fall in shares wiped around $200 billion off of Meta’s market cap.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg also admitted that the social media platform’s growth has been slowing down as younger users left for alternatives. For the first time in 18 years, Facebook’s daily active users fell from 1.930 billion to 1.929 billion.
Last year, Facebook also changed its name to Meta as part of a major rebrand and started to get into cryptocurrencies which promptly failed. Including a stablecoin project. Facebook agreed to sell assets tied to the project born in 2019 as Libra and now known as Diem to Silvergate Capital Corp for about $200 million.
Moreover, the rise of social media platforms such as Tiktok has significantly reduced Facebook’s future growth potential as many younger people are choosing it as their primary social media platform. Zuckerberg said, “The thing that is somewhat unique here is that TikTok is so big a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a fast rate.”
Facebook’s revenue will also decrease further after Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature would decrease the company’s 2022 sales by about $10 billion.
Facebook is one of the most controversial social media platforms. It was previously accused of ignoring vaccine misinformation and having a role in the January 6th attacks on the US state capitol building. The platform has been under fire for many activities such as privacy issues, tax avoidance, misinformation, and bad treatment of its employees.
