Despite reporting a healthy 20% increase in net income for 2017 to $15.9bn (£10.5bn), Facebook reported declines in user numbers and usage time.
Time spent on the platform dropped by 50 million hours everyday, or 5% of total time spent. But the social media network’s advertising revenue is still growing strongly at 49% for the financial year, taking in $39.9bn.
The trending decline in user numbers may predate the changes Facebook instituted in the last quarter of 2017. Pivotal senior research analyst for advertising, Brian Wieser, noted that these trends had been spotted previously based on data from Nielsen’s digital content ratings product.