For the first time since its launch in 2004, Facebook has lost daily users.
Millions of people stopped logging into the social network every day during the last three months of 2021, according to Meta's Q4 earnings presentation. The company logged 1.93 billion daily active users (DAUs) in the third quarter, compared to 1.929 billion at the end of the year.
North America contributed about 1 million of those lost, but the largest dent came from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, suggesting Meta's global campaign has reached saturation. Or, folks are just fed up with the company's many scandals.
Wednesday's announcement, along with lower-than-expected ad growth, sent Meta's stock plummeting more than 20%, wiping out roughly $200 billion in market value, The Washington PostThe Washington Post reported.
"I'm proud of the work that our teams did here," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of the fourth quarter. "We shipped products, our community continued to grow, and businesses of all sizes turned to us to help them reach people." But it's not been all rainbows and lollipops for Facebook, which faces competition from increasingly popular apps. TikTok in particular has monopolized young people's attention and pulled focus from Meta features like Instagram Reels.
Meta also blamed Apple's iOS privacy changes and new regulations in Europe that make it more difficult to track users via personalized ads, but promised to continue fighting. "We're rebuilding a lot of our ads infrastructure so we can continue to grow and deliver high-quality personalized ads," according to Zuckerberg.