Meta has just announced its financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2021. This report also reveals the trend of Facebook's daily active users in that period which has decreased.
Facebook's daily active users (DAU) fell slightly from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion in Q4 2021. This is the first time Facebook's daily active users have fallen in a quarter, even though Facebook's user growth has always been positive since its launch.
The number of monthly active users (MAU) of Facebook in the same period was still flat from the previous quarter, which was 2.9 billion. User growth on Instagram and WhatsApp also remained flat in Q4 2021.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the decline in the number of daily active Facebook users was also influenced by increasingly fierce competition from TikTok.
"We're in the middle of transitioning our own service to short video formats like Reels," Zuckerberg said, as quoted from Engadget, Friday (4/2/2022).
"Reels is now our fastest growing content format so far."
But Zuckerberg added that Reels can't be monetized as optimally as Stories or feeds. In the previous quarter, Zuckerberg said one of Meta's focuses was to attract young users aged 18-29, relying on short video platforms like Reels to compete with TikTok.
In Q4 2021, Meta's revenue reached USD 33.6 billion, higher than analyst estimates of USD 33.4 billion. But they warn the new privacy policy in iOS 14 will significantly affect revenue in the next quarter.
Throughout 2021, Meta also made a profit of USD 40 billion. But they also lost billions of dollars in the Reality Labs division which includes the development of Quest VR headsets, VR software, and other metaverse-related projects.
The division lost $10.2 billion last year, and reported revenue of $2.3 billion. This means that Zuckerberg's dream of making the metaverse a reality isn't going smoothly.
"The vision that will be fully realized is still a long way off. And while the direction is clear, our path forward is still not perfectly defined," Zuckerberg said.