Facebook continues to grow despite industry challenges

More than one million new people go online daily and 45% of the world – about 3.5 billion people annually – are logging in to their favourite social platforms, representing almost 9% increase y-o-y, according to the Digital 2019 report by Hootsuite and We Are Social.

A majority of active social users – 3.25 billion – are accessing social networks through their mobile devices. But which social networks people use and the way they are engaging with them is changing.

Nonetheless, Facebook remains to be the most popular social media network worldwide. With Facebook Ads, brands are able to reach about 2.121 billion people. Although growth is slowing, Facebook is still expanding its user base.

In the last quarter of 2018, Facebook saw an increase of 1.7% or 37 million in monthly active users.

Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, has a smaller user base of about 1 billion active accounts, but it is growing at a faster rate. Instagram saw an increase of 4.4% or 38 million in active users in the last quarter of 2018.

Meanwhile, the active advertising audience of Twitter and Snapchat declined by 2.7% and 12% respectively.

On messaging apps, WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook, topped the charts being the global favourite in 133 countries.

On the other hand, e-commerce is also gaining popularity with more than 2.8 billion people purchasing goods via e-commerce in the past year, up 3.1%.

A majority of 75% of internet users have bought something online in the past month, with most of them through mobile devices. Collectively, that led to US$1.786 trillion ($2.41 trillion) in global online consumer goods spending, a jump of 14% y-o-y.

Penny Wilson, CMO of Hootsuite says, “Although social media came under increased scrutiny and saw diminished trust among users in 2018, people around the world are spending more time on social—the global daily average is now 2 hours and 16 minutes, or one seventh of their waking lives.”

“But to capture the attention of customers, brands need to rethink how they engage on social. Businesses must be respectful of their customers’ privacy, while still creating personal 1:1 connections via content that’s important, interesting and timely to the audience while being genuine and authentic to their brands,” adds Wilson.

Nathan McDonald, co-founder and group CEO of We Are Social says, “Brands need to develop creative, socially-led strategies to make the most of changing habits—especially when it comes to incorporating video and adapting to voice-controlled devices.”