New York: The daily active users of Social networking site Facebook have fallen down for the first time in its-18-year history, the media reported on Thursday.
Meta Networks, the parent company of Facebook, said its DAUs dropped to 1.929 billion, in the three months to the end of December, from 1.930 billion recorded in the previous quarter.
The firm had also warned of slowing revenue growth in the face of competition from rivals like TikTok and YouTube, while advertisers are also cutting spending, BBC said.
In after-hours trading in New York, the shares of Meta also fell down by over 20 per cent. The slide in Meta's share price wiped more than $200bn (£147.5bn) off the company's stock market value, BBC reported.
Other social networking sites including Twitter, Snap and Pinterest's shares also dropped sharply in extended trading.
According to BBC's report, the firm's sales growth had been hurt as audiences, especially younger users, had left for rivals, Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said. Meanwhile, Meta said the privacy changes on the operating system of Apple had hit it.
"The changes have made it harder for brands to target and measure their advertising on Facebook and Instagram and could have an impact in the order of $10 billion for this year," BBC cited Meta's chief financial officer Dave Wehner as saying.
Zuckerberg said he was confident the investments in video and virtual reality would pay off, as previous bets on mobile advertising and Instagram stories have, BBC reported adding that, But, he noted, the firm didn't have to contend with a major rival during previous shifts in strategy.
"The teams are executing quite well and the product is growing very quickly," Zuckerberg said.
"The thing that is somewhat unique here is that TikTok is so big a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a fast rate," he added. (UNI)