The number of people using Facebook daily grew to an average of two billion in December – about a quarter of the world’s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bigger-than-expected growth helped drive new optimism about the company, which has been under pressure as its costs rise and advertising sales slump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shares in parent company Meta surged more than 15% in after-hours trade as boss Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 the “year of efficiency”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said he was focused on cost cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re in a different environment now,” he said, pointing to the firm’s revenue, which declined in 2022 for the first time in its history after years of double-digit growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We don’t anticipate that that’s going to continue, but I also don’t think it’s going to go back to the way it was before.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, announced a major restructuring last year, including reducing office space and cutting 11,000 jobs or about 13% of staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The firm said those moves cost it $4.6bn last year – hitting its profits, which were almost cut in half. It still brought it in $23.2bn in profit for the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“2022 was a challenging year but I think we ended it having made good progress,” Mr Zuckerberg said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the three months to December, the firm said revenue was $32.2bn, down 4% year-on-year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that was better than many analysts had expected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta alarmed investors last year when it posted the first-ever decline in daily Facebook users in its history and signaled it was focusing investments on virtual reality, known as the metaverse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in December, the number of users on the site daily was up 4% from a year earlier, adding users even in Europe and the US, and Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta said the number of people active across all of its apps each day was up 5% year-on-year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Zuckerberg said the company was making progress with its video product – Reels – which it has been focused on as it faces off with rivals such as TikTok, which have gained traction, especially among younger users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Zuckerberg said those efforts were starting to pay off, and ad dollars were starting to follow users to the videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investors seized on the company’s forecast of lower costs and stronger sales than expected in the months ahead, helping send shares higher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company also said it would spend an extra $40bn to buy back shares, which dropped sharply last year amid investor doubts about the direction of the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The number of people using Facebook daily grew to an average of two billion in December – about a quarter of the world’s population. The bigger-than-expected growth helped drive new optimism about the company, which has been under pressure as its costs rise and advertising sales slump. Shares in parent company Meta surged more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,13],"tags":[10,16,12],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-news","category-travel","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-travel","has-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}