mowotlarx t1_jbajanx wrote on March 7, 2023 at 5:33 PM

Reply to comment by sleafordbods in Meta's 'year of efficiency' continues, thousands more expected to be laid off by chrisdh79

Sign ups don't necessarily indicate usage. Meta did this interesting thing where a lot of third party sites - like Archive Social, a site that archives social media pages for federal/state/local government entities - require that you create a Facebook page in order to archive Instagram. Not only that, you must go through Meta Business Suite and create one or more new "profiles" to link to the Instagram. They encourage you to create more and more filler pages. Suddenly you have a single user with multiple "profiles" or "pages" they manage whether or not they are being used. It's a clever scheme.

SlowMotionPanic t1_jbavgu5 wrote on March 7, 2023 at 6:50 PM

These aren't sign ups; they are Daily Active Users. And even if that were the case, the trend from the last several years is clear; upward. Reliably upward.

And what seems more likely? That Meta is attracting more DAU by forcing them to create basically interstitial accounts for third party activities?

Or that Meta is successfully converting people into DAU as they implement more features and relent on more dumb choices (like re-integrating Messenger back into the Facebook app rather than requiring you to use a separate app)?

Reels, for example, has experienced explosive growth on Facebook. I don't understand why people use it given the user experience, terrible ad injection (including in the middle of short form videos), and basically rebranded content. But people are using it. A lot. And their profits show that. Meta is printing money still despite it all. They aren't firing people because of financials, no matter what they say. Their books are public since they are publicly traded, and their books say they are a growing moneymaking machine.