Member Avatar for Dani
Dani 5,664 The Queen of DaniWeb

Has Facebook peaked? Everyone with internet access already has an account. Younger kids prefer instagram (albeit fb owned) and snapchat, and Facebook is being seen as where your parents and grandparents go to share family photos. Will they pivot? Either way they're making a serious amount of money that could, and is, being spent on other technologies like VR, etc. but what do you think will become of Facebook in its current form? Will Facebook messenger go thr eay of AOL Instant Messenger? Oh, how I miss the aim days!

  • 1 Contributor
  • 0 Replies
  • 212 Views

Dani AI

Generated

— short answer: not exactly "peaked," but its role has changed. Meta’s Family of Apps still reaches billions and the business remains highly monetized: average daily active people were 3.58 billion in December 2025 and Q4 2025 revenue was $59.89B, driven overwhelmingly by advertising. (investor.atmeta.com)

The big shift since 2017 is audience and attention, not pure scale. U.S. and global teens now favor YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat; Facebook use among teens plunged from about 71% in 2014–15 to roughly a third in recent Pew surveys. At the same time the company rebranded to Meta in October 2021 to push VR/AR and the metaverse, and Reality Labs has absorbed heavy losses as those bets scaled (roughly $19.2B in 2025). Those trends explain why Facebook feels "where parents are" even while the parent company keeps growing and reinvesting. (pewresearch.org)

Practical takeaway for anyone asking whether to "double down" on Facebook in 2017-style ways: treat Facebook as one component of a multi-platform strategy. Prioritize short-form video and community features (where attention is moving), own your audience with first-party channels and lists, and experiment with messaging/commerce integrations rather than assuming Messenger will vanish like AIM — messaging is now mobile-first and deeply embedded across apps. Expect the core app to keep evolving (and being regulated), but not to disappear overnight; the company is simply chasing new growth engines alongside a still-powerful ad business. (investor.atmeta.com)

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.