Another 16 million people joined Facebook last quarter, bringing the total number of daily active users to 2 billion, Meta said during its latest financial report.
Facebook isn’t the first Meta platform to break the 2 billion user mark (that was previously achieved by WhatsApp) — but the numbers show that the social network, which is the company’s biggest source of ad revenue, is still growing, despite recent major cuts.
While Meta’s revenue has declined over the past year, the company earned $32.2 billion in the fourth quarter — more than expected, despite a 4% decline from 2021.
Meta laid off more than 11,000 workers, and Mark Zuckerberg said during the financial report that the cuts will continue in the future, because “the management theme for 2023 is the Year of Efficiency.”
Course
EMPLOYER BRANDING
Build a high-quality and attractive employer brand in just one month.
REGISTER!
“We’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t working or may no longer be as important,” Zuckerberg said.
It was also emphasized that Meta in 2023 will focus on AI as a priority area.
“Generative artificial intelligence is a very exciting new field with so many different applications. One of my goals for Meta is to build on our research to become a leader in generative AI,” Zuckerberg said.
Meanwhile, Meta continues to lose huge amounts of money on its investments in the meta universe. Reality Labs, a division that deals with virtual and augmented reality projects and the metaverse, lost $4.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 and almost $14 billion for the full year. The company expects to lose even more money on Reality Labs next year.
“We still expect Reality Labs’ losses to widen in 2023, but we intend to continue investing heavily in this area given the significant long-term opportunities we see,” said Meta CFO Susan Lee.
Source: Engadget
