That is an fascinating shift.
Final week, along with reporting its Q3 efficiency replace, Meta additionally shared its newest EU consumer numbers for Fb and Instagram as a part of its Digital Providers Act (DSA) obligations.
And the numbers present that Instagram has now surpassed Fb’s lively consumer depend within the area.
As you’ll be able to see on this graph, Instagram now has 269.1 million month-to-month lively customers in EU, versus 260.6 million for Fb. In Meta’s first EU consumer report, protecting the interval between April to September 2023, each platforms had the identical consumer depend, at 259 million MAU.
However now, IG has outdated the corporate’s flagship app, with Fb seeing a lot slower development, and even barely declining in utilization over the latest measurement interval (April to September this yr).
Might that be a extra frequent development all over the world, with Fb probably dropping viewers, as Instagram continues so as to add extra customers?
Properly, we don’t know for certain, as Meta stopped reporting Fb’s month-to-month lively consumer counts this yr, in favor a mixed viewers measurement for its whole “Household of Apps” (Fb, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads).
However based mostly on the final time that it reported Fb’s month-to-month actives (This autumn 2023), it does appear that that is extra seemingly confined to EU, and probably U.S. audiences.
As you’ll be able to see on this chart, Fb’s EU consumer depend was in decline all through 2023, and actually, had been on a downward development since 2022. Its U.S. consumer depend had additionally been pretty stagnant, however Fb utilization was nonetheless rising in different markets.
As such, it looks as if this shift could be extra confined to EU, and never reflective of broader tendencies. Besides, it’s fascinating to see IG probably taking the mantle from Fb as Meta’s foremost app, even when solely in chosen markets.
The opposite query then is: “Why is Fb dropping traction with European audiences?”
Properly, a few of that may be attributed to the implementation of improved knowledge privateness laws in Europe, which have revealed extra concerning the knowledge that Fb takes in, and might use in its numerous functions. That, some recommend, has seen extra customers flip away from the app, whereas different stories point out that extra EU customers now discover Fb to be outdated versus different apps.
Regardless of the purpose, it is usually vital to notice that Fb stays vastly common within the area, with 260 million lively customers. TikTok has 150 million EU month-to-month actives, whereas X has 66 million, so on stability, even with a slight decline, Fb continues to be a key interactive platform for European customers.
It’s simply not as common as IG now could be, which seemingly means that Fb isn’t catching on with youthful audiences in addition to it used to.
Thanks once more to Xavier Degraux for the heads up on the newest EU stories.
