Meta which is the parent of Facebook, set a record that is not at all pleasant. Their share price plummeted to record the largest decline in the value of the company in the history of the stock market in the United States.
As quoted by us from CNBC, Meta's market capitalization was cut by USD 237.6 billion . This is much larger than the previous record that Apple held when it lost $182 billion in valuation in September 2020.
Facebook has experienced a similar incident, namely a decline of USD 119 billion in 2018. But this time, as mentioned, the number is much higher.
As an illustration, the amount of USD 237 billion is greater than the market value of companies such as Netflix, McDonalds, Morgan Stanlet and AT&T. Even higher than the combined value of General Motors, Uber and Barclays.
The decline in Meta's valuation follows an announcement from the company that Facebook's user growth is slowing. In the last quarter of 2021, Facebook's daily active users also declined.
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 are in the middle of transitioning our own service to short video formats like Reels," said the Facebook founder, as quoted by Engadget.