How many monthly users does the speaker claim Facebook has?

Name: The circle of life (for social platforms)
Uploaded: 2023-03-14T13:00:06+00:00
Duration: 59 s
Channel: Peter Vander Wall
Description: A short spoken YouTube segment arguing that social platforms follow a life cycle: rapid early growth with high organic virality (example: early TikTok)…

Peter Vander WallFounder driving creative community growth

The circle of life (for social platforms)

14 Mar 2023 · 1 min

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0:59

A short spoken YouTube segment arguing that social platforms follow a life cycle: rapid early growth with high organic virality (example: early TikTok), a middle stage where organic reach coexists with paid ads (Instagram), and a late stage dominated by paid advertising with negligible organic reach (Facebook). The speaker cites Facebook’s large user base ("almost 3 billion monthly users") as evidence it has peaked and uses this lifecycle to explain why platforms intentionally reduce organic reach to sell ads.

Questions this video answers

Almost 3 billion monthly users.

Chapters

The reason nobody talks about Facebook anymore is because it's basically peaked. They've got almost 3 billion monthly users. You can't get a lot bigger than that. And it kind of brings up this interesting concept, the life cycle of a social media platform. I mean, look at TikTok. When the app first got popular, you could get some crazy numbers, completely organic. And it's literally a strategy social media platforms use to get you hooked. Everybody joins the app because it's so easy to go viral. And then over time, they just consistently lower the amount of organic reach you can get. So it's virtually nothing, which is what we see on Facebook. This is completely intentional. It's how they sell paid advertising. Instagram is actually a great example of a platform kind of in the middle stage where you still get some organic reach, but it's kind of paired with paid ads. TikTok is heading in this direction too. You can still get some organic reach, but not like the crazy numbers you used to be able to get. Because of that, you start supplementing with paid advertising and there's kind of the final stages of a platform's life cycle. Organic reach is just basically non existent. It's all up to paid ads now. That's where Facebook kind of is right now. And by the way, that's why Facebook ads are like the thing in paid advertising.