Facebook surpasses 3 billion monthly active users

Facebook has more than 3 billion monthly active users, according to Meta’s latest quarterly report. That’s quite the staggering number. Even though Facebook has declined in popularity among younger people, the platform is far from dead. Across Meta’s entire family of apps — which includes WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and now Threads — there were 3.88 billion monthly active users. That’s almost half of the world population.

Milestones are fun, but perhaps more importantly for Meta and its investors, daily active users have continued to grow too. Facebook has 2.064 billion daily active users, up from 2.037 billion last quarter. That growth is pivotal, because in the final quarter of 2021, Facebook reported its first-ever quarterly decline in daily active users.

This growth could be driven in part by Reels, the TikTok copycat feature that Meta has been pushing heavily across Instagram and Facebook. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Reels get 200 billion plays per day across the family of apps.

The new, text-based social platform that’s tied with Instagram, Threads, is also doing quite well, per Zuckerberg’s comments.

“I think we have the most exciting roadmap ahead that I’ve seen in a while,” Zuckerberg said, sounding noticeably more chipper than he has on some recent earnings calls, when Meta posted concerning revenue declines. “We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate, and more importantly, we’re seeing more people coming back daily than I expected.”

Threads hit 100 million users within five days. Naturally, not all of those people are going to become dedicated Threads posters. But last week, Zuckerberg posted that “10s of millions of people come back daily,” which is quite impressive.