Facebook loses daily users for first time ever, ad growth slows

 The Meta-owned Facebook platform registered 1.929 billion daily users in the fourth quarter of 2021 — from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter

For the first time ever, Facebook has lost daily users globally, reporting lower-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock plunging nearly 20 per cent. The massive stock drop instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in its market value. The Meta-owned Facebook platform registered 1.929 billion daily users in the fourth quarter of 2021 — from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter. The company confirmed late on Wednesday that it is the first sequential decline in its history. Facebook’s monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.91 billion as of December 31, 2021, an increase of 4 per cent year-over-year. Meta still made nearly $40 billion in profit in 2021, mostly from advertising.

“We had a solid quarter as people turned to our products to stay connected and businesses continued to use our services to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. “I’m encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce, and virtual reality, and we’ll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse,” he added.

Why are Indians boycotting Snapchat? Everything you need to know

People mistakenly uninstalled Snapdeal instead of Snapchat

 

Snapchat has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the weekend ever since CEO Evan Spiegel allegedly claimed that he is not interested in expanding the platform's user base in 'poor countries like India and Spain'. 

This lead to a huge uproar in India, especially on social media forums. People not only ridiculed Snapchat for the remarks but also began a boycott campaign on Twitter and began to uninstall the app on their phones. Here is what exactly happened.

According to a report published in Variety, the CEO while discussing expansion plans in a meeting allegedly dismissed an employee's concern of the slow growth rate of the app in India, stating that the app was only meant for 'rich people'.

As reported earlier, According to one of the employees, Spiegel had during a meeting said, "This app is only for rich people. I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain." It is rumoured that this comment was made by Spiegel in 2015.

After reports of Spiegel's alleged claims of Snapchat being a 'rich people's app' surfaced, Indian users took to Twitter to express their dissent over the comment. 

Hashtags like #BycottSnapchat and UnistallSpachat were trending on Twitter.

Soon after Variety published the alleged comment, the app's ratings on Google play store and other such platforms witnessed a sharp decline, a 4.4 to a 3.6 rating. Furthermore, the number of one-star rating by the users shot up from 39,102 to 192,906 in just 24 hours.

Others took action on the Apple App store, driving the ratings of the App to one star and bombarding it with sarcastic reviews.| READ MORE...