This just in: People still use Facebook?

FACEBOOK CROSSED 2 BILLION USERS, AND REELS ARE UP 20%

I don't know who needs to hear this, but Facebook is still a really big deal.

If it were a country, its population would far surpass China and India as the largest in the world.

And yet, it's so easy to write it off along with the other major social networks as being old news, choosing instead to focus on the "next big thing."

Are there more interesting places to be creating content? Of course. Has growth slowed? Yes, but when your user base includes pretty much every person with an Internet connection, your trajectory has to level off at some point.

The big headline this week is that Facebook's growth has actually picked up in early 2023, sailing past 2 Billion daily active users. Meta's revenue numbers don't seem to be paying attention to the news of its demise either, as it soared past expectations to hit $31.25 Billion.

How are they doing it?

One of the major factors has been the growth of Reels, which are up over 20% in usage last Quarter. Meta has been making major investments in AI tools to improve their algorithm, which appear to be paying off by attracting more people to watch their remake of TikTok. If you've been using Reels for a while, you may have even noticed a recent, marked improvement in the quality and accuracy of the content that you're being served.

The fact is that most users are already on a Meta-owned property, so even if the algorithm isn't quite as good, and the content isn't quite as clever, people are much more likely to scroll where they don't have to switch to a new app.

So What?

While it's always a good idea to be trying new spaces and testing new formats, for now the platform opportunity is still good old fashioned Facebook, so don't sleep on the Newsfeed as you're building your 2023 content plan. In some ways, the brand exodus from the more established platforms may present an opportunity to those who have the persistence to use the tools that exist in innovative ways.

And it's not just Facebook, either. Amid all of the chatter, it may have been easy to sleep on the other giants as well. For example:

• Snapchat+ now has over 2 million active, paying subscribers — Twitter Blue, which gets much more attention, has an estimated 325,000
• Linkedin quietly grew by 10%, crossing 900 million active users

If you only read the headlines, then trying to figure out where to spend your brand's time, attention, and budget this year may feel like an impossible task; however, if you look only at the numbers, and take a moment to reflect on just how absurdly large those opportunities are, perhaps the path forward will feel a little less daunting.

4 QUICK UPDATES

• Track all of next week's Super Bowl ads here — Pay attention to Avocados using ChatGPT, Doritos using TikTok, and Limit Break giving away 10,000 NFTs
• TikTok shared Super Bowl-specific advice for brands wanting to get in on the big game without paying for a big ad
• Instagram is adding Lead Forms within action buttons that you can use in business profiles
• Visual Capitalist published its annual list of the 50 mist visited websites - check out the Netflix vs TikTok battle for #17, and the absolute dominance of Google at both #1 and #2

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting