> There are 3 billion users of FB/WhatsApp/Instagram combined
Is there tho? I have Facebook account but don't use it in any meaningful way. I'm certainly not feeding it any new data. I'm curious to know what percentage of that 3 billion are zombie accounts like mine.
There almost certainly is. I think on HN people aren’t really aware that they don’t represent the median internet user super well. I would wager if you were to tally every late millennial and zoomer across the west, Instagram usage would probably be near 90%. Facebook usage among older people is also still absolutely rampant, at least anecdotally. Not to mention WhatsApp usage which is huge everywhere but the US seemingly
The population of the west who fit into zoomer near millennials wouldn't even be close to 500m. Maybe if we add threads bots we could get closer. Most of the accounts are bots/fake/not used anymore.
90% of zoomers don't have an account, most rarely use it and don't add more than a few photos for social proof.
This. The metric is "monthly active users" but people prefer that other metric "I don't use it, I don't seen anyone using it in front of me, so nobody uses it".
Instagram seems like their most engaged property. FB seems to be devolving into groups + marketplace, and WhatsApp gets a lot of play but I don't think it's the best ad serving/bot surface. I don't think Insta alone can carry the company long term, and while I can see group moderation bots, marketplace agents and insta content assistants being popular, I don't think Meta has an entre into running people's lives the way Google does.
Who knows for sure, but Meta's own financial disclosures[1] report over 3.6 billion "Family Daily Actice People (DAP), which represents the de-duplicated number of people who log into at least one of Meta's core properties (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp) daily.
At even 1% of that figure, that's a heck of a lot of people.
Almost everyone in south asia, Latam, and Africa with a smartphone uses whatsapp daily. I mean the penetration rate is actually crazy. In my latam country 92% of internet users are whatsapp users. In india, the figure is 97%.
So how many billions is that before throwing in IG and FB?
I should clarify that what I mean is that it's very useful for buying and selling. Where I live, at least, it's more active than Kijiji or Craigslist ever were.
I’m sure there is a percentage of accounts that are zombie but there’s no doubt that Meta has an absolute shit-ton of daily users. All else aside, in most countries outside the US WhatsApp is the primary messaging medium.
Is there tho? I have Facebook account but don't use it in any meaningful way. I'm certainly not feeding it any new data. I'm curious to know what percentage of that 3 billion are zombie accounts like mine.