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.
I’m in Canada, and I’m pretty locked into Facebook for a few things:
- Marketplace (other buy and sell groups, finding contractors/handymen)
- Events (parties and such)
- Promoting my band
- Group chats (Facebook is the platform that has the maximum overlap between people just being on there, not everyone has an iPhone, or is on WhatsApp, or is on discord, etc)
- my extended family is also on it, but not on any other platform.
- I know it’s super trendy to hate on their functionality- but they have date and posttype filters, silo’d searching per posttype, calendar and event functionality, threaded comments, and repeat for posttype with communitytype and event type… which insta, whatsapp, discord, Twitter, reddit and tiktok don’t have
WhatsApp is very common if anyone in your inner circle is international (as in lives in another country, not just from there). My family still uses it for our group chat bc one of my siblings used to travel a lot and live overseas, and we’re all American.
I have other friends from other countries who use WhatsApp to talk to people back home, but they also use standard messaging apps for talking to people here.
In some countries, cellular companies still charge for sending text messages to people who have a different provider. WhatsApp is an easy way to connect with all of the people you know without paying extra fees.
And there’s a whole customer interface that lets you order directly from small businesses, which is super convenient if you live in a country that still has a lot of “mom and pop” stores instead of giant superstore chains.
