Roughly half of Instagram’s users 1 billion users now use Instagram Stories every day. That 500 million daily user count is up from 400 million in June 2018. 2 million advertiseres are now buying Stories ads across Facebook’s properties.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Stories the last big game-changing feature from Facebook, but after concentrating on security last year, it plans to ship more products that make “major improvements” in people’s lives.
During today’s Q4 2018 earnings call, Zuckerberg outlined several areas where Facebook will push new products this year:
- Encryption and ephemerality will be added to more features for security and privacy
- Messaging features will make Messenger and WhatsApp “the center of [your] social experiences”
- WhatsApp payments will expand to more countries
- Stories will gain new private sharing options
- Groups will expand to encompass new experiences
- Facebook Watch will become mainstream this year, Zuckerberg expects
- Augmented and virtual reality will be improved, and Oculus Quest will ship this spring
- Instagram commerce and shopping will get new features
Facebook says it now has 2.7 billion monthly users across the Facebook family of apps: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. However, Facebook CFO David Wehner says “Over time we expect family metrics to play the primary role in how we talk about our company and we will eventually phase out Facebook-only community metrics.” That shows Facebook is self-conscious about how its user base is shifting away from its classic social network and towards Instagram and its messaging apps.
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