The daily active Facebook users worldwide were 1.929 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, showing a decrease for the first time compared to the previous quarter, when it was 1.93 billion.
The monthly users – who use Facebook at least once a month – remained stable at 2.91 billion in the last quarter of last year, but the total number of monthly active users across all affiliate platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.) increased by 9% compared to a year ago, reaching 3.59 billion.
In addition to the drop in daily users, shares of parent company Meta Platforms fell dramatically by about 22% in the US stock market late Wednesday, reducing its market value by 200 billion as the company announced worse-than-expected economic forecasts.
At the same time, the cost of developing metaverse, the company’s new big vision that will be the next “enhanced” generation of the Internet, where users will share virtual worlds, has become visible. Thus, according to Reuters, the BBC and the “New York Times”, Meta’s profits fell by 8% in the fourth quarter of 2021, to $ 10.3 billion, compared to a year earlier.
The large investment of 10 billion dollars for its development metaversethe decline in advertising revenue on social networking platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and the growing competition from platforms such as Tik Tok (where they are popular, especially in the new 30-second videos) and YouTube, are among the reasons that Meta seems to be “forced” somewhat.
It expects only a 3% slowdown in its revenue growth in the next quarter, which it estimates will be $ 27 billion to $ 29 billion, compared with analysts’ estimates of more than $ 30 billion.
The company’s total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 – most comes from advertising (Meta is the second largest digital advertising platform in the world after Google) – increased to 33.67 billion compared to 28.07 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2020. On the other hand, within a year the company’s expenses almost doubled to 21 billion dollars, which led to a decrease in profitability .
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company, said he was “encouraged by the progress we have made over the last year” and assured that “we will continue to invest in 2022 as we work to create the metaverse”.
In this context, the subsidiary Meta Reality Labs, which has taken on the augmented and virtual reality sector and presented separate financial results for the first time, showed increased net losses of $ 10.2 billion in 2021, compared to losses of $ 6.6 billion in 2020. Zuckerberg acknowledged that this sector of the company is not going to be profitable “in the near future”, but he appeared optimistic that investing in metaverse would eventually pay off (profitable). Meta Reality Labs had revenues of approximately $ 2.3 billion in 2021.
It was preceded by the announcement of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, that in the last quarter of 2021 it showed an increase of 36% in its profits and 32% in its revenues.
Read all the news
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
Skai
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
