Meta Celebrates Facebook’s New Milestone As Users Hit 2.09B In September 2023

Mark Zuckerberg’s social media company, Meta, has revealed that Facebook’s daily average users (DAUs) increased by 5% year on year to 2.09 billion in September this year. 

Meta disclosed this in its earnings report for Q3 2023.

According to the report, all the family of apps owned by the company, which include WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and most recently, Threads, had total daily average users of 3.14 billion as of September, which was 7% growth year on year.  

This shows that Facebook is the most used of the Meta apps family.

With 2.09 billion DAUs, Facebook alone accounted for 66.5% of daily users across all Meta platforms.  

The company said it now has more than 3.9 billion people using at least one of its apps every month. 

Increase in revenue 

With the increase in users, Meta posted a $34.15 billion revenue for Q3, representing an increase of 23% year-over-year. Meta said it also recorded a significant increase in ad impressions across its family of apps in the quarter under review. 

• In the third quarter of 2023, ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 31% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 6% year-over-year,” Meta stated.  

Zuckerberg announces Meta’s plans for 2024 

In a Wednesday earnings call on the Q3 results, Zuckerberg expressed satisfaction with Meta’s performance and shared the company’s plans for the coming year.  

• “As we’re looking ahead and planning for next year, I wanted to share a few thoughts on what I’m expecting. I’ve been happy with our results this year so far, and we’re planning to continue focusing on operating efficiently going forward — both because it creates a more disciplined and lean culture, and also because it provides stability to see our long-term initiatives through in a very volatile world.  
• “In terms of investment priorities, AI will be our biggest investment area in 2024 — both in engineering and compute resources. But I want to avoid allocating a lot of new headcounts, so we’re going to continue deprioritizing a number of non-AI projects across the company to shift people towards working on AI instead.  
• “On the recruiting front, one dynamic that I want to flag is that we have a sizable hiring backlog right now since part of our layoffs earlier this year included teams swapping out certain skillsets for being able to hire others, and we’re still going to be hiring for those roles going into 2024. That means that even though we’re planning to grow headcount at a much slower rate going forward, the actual rate next year may temporarily be faster as we work through this hiring backlog,” he said. 

Lawsuit against Meta 

Although Zuckerberg was quiet about it during the earnings call, the release of Meta’s Q3 results came a day after dozens of states in the United States filed a joint lawsuit against Meta over claims that Instagram and Facebook are affecting the mental health of young users.

The landmark lawsuit is challenging the addictive nature of Meta’s platforms and also claims that the company prioritizes profit at the expense of its users’ mental health.