In a year that seemed uphill, Mark Zuckerberg was satisfied with the results.
Good news for Mark Zuckerberg, in a year that was painting uphill. The results for the first quarter of 2023 have just been presented and the numbers have left shareholders calm and gave it a breath to the dome.
The company has shared updated information on the status of Meta and its applications, in the first quarter 2023 earnings report, where its CEO was smiling.
“We have had a good quarter and our community continues to grow. Our work on AI is paying off well in our applications and businesses,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta confirmed that more than 3 billion people use “at least” one of their applications every day, between Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and underlines the growth of the Reels content format,
“We’re also becoming more efficient, so we can build better products faster and put ourselves in a stronger position to deliver on our long-term vision,” the CEO explained.
In addition to its results report, Meta has also shared data related to the evolution of Facebook, which many already considered finished.
The number of monthly active users on the social network inherits the growing trend that it had been experiencing in recent times. Even so, his progress is moderate, since he has only increased by 0.08%, reaching 2,989 million users.
Another of the social networks owned by the company is Instagram, specifically data related to the Reels function, which doubles the number of times these videos are shared, boosting social participation on the platforms.
Part of this success with the Reels format has to do with the investment the company has made in the recommendations and classification system of its discovery engine in the ‘apps’. The time users spend on Reels has increased by 24%.
Zuckerberg also noted that they are gaining share in the short-form video space, competing with other leading social networks like TikTok.
The year of efficiency
The beginning of the so-called year of efficiency was marked by the personnel cuts made by Meta. In mid-March, the company announced a new batch of 10,000 layoffs, just a few months after it made the biggest cut in its history in November 2022.
For this reason, he had to pay 4.3 billion dollars in the first three months of this year, an 18% increase due to money they have had to invest in layoffs, or as the report puts it, “employee-related costs and restructuring expenses.”
The Reality Labs division continues to be very loss-making. Its revenues have fallen 51% due to the meager results of the Quest 2 viewer. Operating losses reach 4 billion dollars, 1 billion more than those of the same quarter of 2022.
Maintaining the investment in AI and Metaverso has cost Meta this first quarter of the current year 3,992 million dollars, compared to 2,960 million dollars in 2022.
And while no one sees a way out of this yawning pit, Mark Zuckerberg has insisted that the company’s future will remain the Metaverse and AI.