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Facebook has managed to get its user growth back on track, easing market concerns, although revenue growth slowed in the first quarter of 2022, partly due to the war in Ukraine, among other issues.

In its first performance update of the year, Meta once again underlined its ability to sustain performance, even as it focuses on the next stage of digital connection, after a drop in usage, the latest report wondered if it had plateaued and was now on the decline in the eyes of users.

First, on daily assets – Facebook DAUs arrived at 1.96 billion on average for March 2022, a 4% year-over-year increase

The majority of Facebook’s usage growth has once again come from the Asia-Pacific region, where the app continues to diversify into developing markets and is seeing steady adoption.

However, you’ll also notice that Facebook’s daily usage rates decreased by 2 million in Europe and saw only a slight increase in the US. Facebook usage has fluctuated in both markets for some time, and it may well be that Facebook has indeed reached peak adoption in these regions.

Although at the same time, a large number of people are still logging into Facebook every day in these markets. This is probably indicative of the key login role the app now plays on the modern interactive process – although I’d still like to see how much time people actually spend in the app, and how many just log in to check their notifications, before spend most of their time online elsewhere.

In terms of monthly assets, Facebook grew to 2.94 billion, an increase of 3% year-on-year.

The decline in European usage is much more pronounced here (-9 million), which seems to indicate a decline in the app’s popularity in some markets.

Although this also probably concerns Russian bans. Facebook reportedly had over 70 million users in Russia in February 2022, before The Russian communications regulator has switched to completely block access to Facebook early Marchin response to Meta’s restriction on Russian state media.

In this case, Facebook probably lost a lot more active users than shown here – but that’s not Meta’s fault, nor does it reflect a trend away from the app.

But that could make Meta user numbers much worse in Europe in Q2, depending on how things go.

Overall, however, the numbers show that Facebook remains hugely popular, while Meta’s “Family of Apps” chart, which includes unique users across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, has also continued to rise.

The discrepancy between this graph and the use of Facebook in isolation suggests that there are approximately 700 million non-Facebook users logging into these other apps each month.

Meta doesn’t break down the usage figures for its other platforms, but given WhatsApp has over 2 billion users, across a wide range of markets, that seems to indicate there’s a lot of crossover between the use of Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is said to have over 2 billion users in its own right, although Meta has not officially confirmed this stat.

But again, the most interesting consideration here is how much time people spend in Meta’s apps – because while most people will be logging in to see what their friends and family have shared each day, I suspect that many now spend much more time in TikTok and YouTube instead.

This seems to be the most informative stat, and Meta hasn’t provided anything official on this front for quite some time.

In terms of revenue, Meta brought in $27 billion for the quarter, up 7% year over year:

Falling revenue in its two largest ad markets will be of concern, though Meta notes that ad impressions served on its apps are up 15% year-over-year.

Meta is still struggling with Apple’s ATT update, which has limited its ability to collect data, which, as previously noted, would lower its bottom line by around $10 billion. than in 2022. Meta also indicates that the “softness of income in the second half of the first quarter” was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, while at the same time it continues to invest in emerging technologies, leading to a increase in expenses.

It’s an inevitable impact of his focus on the future, but that focus is also, according to Meta, what will guarantee his continued performance, and there’s a lot to come on that front.

In many ways, the company is in a period of transition, which Meta itself explained to the market in its recent statements. As it looks to the next connection step, this will inevitably have an impact on current performance. The increase in R&D costs is the most obvious hit, but it also means that virtually every project, within every one of its applications, now has to be designed with an eye to the future, which means cycles of longer development times, increased complexity and more labor time as a result.

The Metaverse may be the future, but shareholders are essentially betting on Zuck’s we here, hoping he’s right – because as we’ve seen, Meta’s core apps are already feeling the pinch, and it doesn’t seem like it’s changing its approach, with costs continuing to rise and more resources being directed towards increasingly expensive hardware versions.

If Meta truly believes in Metaverse change, it will likely also see it take another hit on the retail costs of its VR headsets, and possibly AR glasses, because the real money is in mass adoption and Metaverse engagement expansion.

Essentially, while the market probably isn’t too excited about Meta’s results right now, it’s unlikely to get much better for a while yet. And if the Metaverse ends up taking a decade to become the next plain of digital existence, as Meta predicted, it will certainly test the patience of $FB holders.

For users, Meta will stay on track with increased e-commerce integrations and more opportunities for creators to make money in its apps. The latter could also power the Metaverse, with a new fund already in place to support VR creators, and more educational programs to guide artists and influencers into the next space, in hopes they’ll bring their public with them.

Instagram remains focused on beating TikTok at its own game, while WhatsApp is still working on business tools, which may have greater potential in developing markets.

But really, it’s about the metaverse and laying the groundwork for the next step. There are some exciting developments here, but they’re not coming soon – it’s not just about flipping a switch and ushering in the next step.

Which means a level of patience is required which the market is not known for.

Reddit has announced a significant expansion of its search capability, with the ability to now search Reddit comments, in addition to posts, providing new ways to facilitate discovery and discover relevant conversations within the app.

As you can see in this example, now when performing a keyword search on Reddit, you will be able to filter your results by “Comments”, in addition to the existing content category filters.

As explained by Reddit:

“With this new feature, users looking for particular threads or comments on Reddit no longer need to click through multiple posts and then scroll through what can sometimes be thousands of comments to find threads that The new feature solves this problem and quickly gives editors the ability to directly comment on research and further refine their searches by looking for comments within specific communities.

It could give your search for social conversation a big boost. Reddit’s active communities have always been a rich vein for gleaning insights into audience interests, but now you can dig even deeper and get people’s direct responses to different ideas and products, or mentions of them in in-app conversations.

This could be a great way to gather valuable feedback, and it’s worth taking a look at what you can find with the new search filters to better understand the different elements.

On top of that, Reddit has also updated its search results page, with a simplified layout to better focus on the results.

“Based on user feedback, we’re now prioritizing posts over other types of content in our updated search design, and we’ve simplified the results page so users can more easily browse and find what they’re looking for. ‘they are looking for.”

Reddit is also working to improve search relevance, with less restrictive matching to provide more results for queries that would previously have yielded no matches, more tailored matching based on popular searches, and the incorporation of previous search signals to better order relevant results.

And clearly those efforts are paying off – Reddit says that in the first quarter of 2022 it saw a 20% increase in the number of people using its search option, a massive jump, while over 26,000 early testers for its new comment search capability have already searched more than 5 billion comments in the app.

This could be a handy feature, for various purposes, and certainly, for social media marketers, it could be extremely useful to be able to browse subreddit threads to improve your perspective on your target audience.

Reddit’s new search options are rolling out starting today.

For marketing strategies to be good and effective, it is necessary to know the new trends. In this article we explain how to be up to date in branding, design and user experience, since throughout 2022, among many other things, we will seek to improve the user experience and give the content a greater personality.

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