Is the Social Giant Reaching Its Limits?

Facebook maintained its popularity for a long time due to its ability to connect with old friends and family members that you don’t get to see every day. Now, with more apps that offer that same benefit and more, that has proven to be not enough.Meta, the company behind Facebook, has revealed that it is losing users for the first time in years—is it the beginning of the end for the social media giant? Keep reading to find out.

Facebook Is Losing Users

Facebook is losing users for the first time ever. According to Meta’s press release , Facebook had 1.929 billion daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 1.93 billion in the previous quarter, suggesting that people are ditching Facebook.

As for monthly active users, Facebook had 2.91 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. Facebook notes that these figures are for its Family of Apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, as well as other services.

Has Facebook’s Popularity Peaked?

Facebook’s loss of users is a big deal, considering this hasn’t happened in nearly two decades. It suggests that perhaps Facebook’s popularity may have peaked. Let’s look at the reasons why this may be the case.

Mark Zuckerberg blames TikTok for his company’s drop in user numbers. As Zuckerberg stated in his remarks during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call:

People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is investing more into short-form videos to better compete with TikTok, including Reels, which it launched on Instagram in 2020.

However, the success of Instagram Reels hasn’t been enough to keep Facebook users engaged—perhaps the feature doesn’t appeal to an audience that uses the platform to talk to friends and family. Regardless, Reels are native to the Instagram app, which doesn’t account for all of Facebook’s users.

TikTok will continue to lead in this short-form video content boom, and even though Facebook and other apps have copycat features like Reels, they just aren’t as good or as popular as TikTok, the app that made this type of content so popular in the first place.

Recently, there has been a rising demand for visual content, especially video. While Facebook has video features, it just isn’t cutting it in the bigger scheme of things and in a world where the likes of TikTok and YouTube—two platforms with both short– and long-form video—exist.

It explains why YouTube is the second most-used social media platform currently. According to Statista , the platform had nearly 2.3 billion active users as of October 2021, with TikTok trailing behind Meta’s Family of Apps with one billion active users. Although Facebook has adapted with video content features, it isn’t primarily a video-focused platform, and maybe it is beginning to pay for it.

Lastly, Meta’s push towards the metaverse could also very well be the reason Facebook’s user base has started to deteriorate. People are more interested to see what the company has to offer next rather than sticking to a product that’s likely past its prime.

Can Facebook Bounce Back?

While Facebook is losing users, it still maintains a big gap ahead of its competition, like YouTube and TikTok. So, it has enough time to bounce back, provided the company has a solid plan.

Of course, Facebook has to go all out—it needs to invest in gaining back lost users and continue to attract more users from other platforms to maintain its grip on the market.

The social networking giant also needs to be willing to pivot and make the necessary changes to effectively compete with video-focused platforms, which are becoming increasingly popular.