I read “it’s dying” by people on Discord and Reddit all the time, but the numbers prove otherwise. It’s been going up this entire time and sitting over 3 billion MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS!
I feel like the bubble around people on other platforms saying “who uses Facebook anymore lol” is kind of wild given the numbers. Keep in mind these are active users not just abandoned accounts.
It looks to me like “social media” breaks down into a few categories: Video/image sharing (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Douyin, Kuaishou); Messaging (WhatsApp, WeChat, FB Messenger, Telegram, Snapchat, QQ); Microblogging (Twitter, Weibo); and tangled fog of pulsating yearning (Pinterest).
Then, there’s Facebook, which defies easy categorization. It does all of the above, plus more. It’s how people maintain loose connections with other people that they may not talk to every day. What is its competition? Basically, I think it remains popular because it’s the default, nothing else can replace it.
Yeah it’s hilarious how people have been saying Facebook is dying for years now. It’s the biggest it’s ever been.