HIGHLIGHTS

• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an earnings call said that video accounts for almost half of all time spent on Facebook.
• Zuckerberg also spoke about his vision of transforming Facebook into a metaverse company.
• Facebook reported a revenue of over $29 billion, an increase of 56 per cent from last year.

People spending time on social media directed their time watching short videos on the platforms. The presumption holds true as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an earnings call said that video accounts for almost half of all time spent on Facebook while Reels is the largest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram. Even though the Facebook CEO did not mention the stats around this trend, it can be presumed that the platform’s growing popularity and the social media giant’s attempt to invest in creators is pushing more users to spend time creating or watching videos on the platform.

Earlier this month, Zuckerberg announced that the social media company will invest $1 billion in creators by the end of 2022 and that it would fund programs, creator funds and other monetisation programs to boost all stripes of creators on its platforms. The company has further promised its creator community that it will not take a cut of their earnings until 2023.

Facebook reported a revenue of over $29 billion, an increase of 56 per cent from last year. It further reported more than 3.5 billion monthly active people, though user growth in the US once again remained flat.Facebook launched Reels just as competition TikTok was facing heat and bans from some countries including India last year. However, the short video platform continues to thrive worldwide, despite its ban in India.

TikTok has recently been downloaded more than three billion times around the world. According to new Sensor Tower data, TikTok is the fifth non-game app to ever surpass the three billion install mark. The only other apps to have reached more than three billion downloads since January 2014 are Facebook and WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

Zuckerberg also spoke about his vision of transforming Facebook into a metaverse company that will enable people to coexist in a virtual space together. “In the coming years, I expect people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social media company to seeing us as a metaverse company. In many ways the metaverse is the ultimate expression of social technology,” he said during the quarterly earnings call.

“The defining quality of the metaverse presence is this feeling that you’re really there with another person or in another place,” Zuckerberg told analysts. “Creating avatars and digital objects are going to be central to how we express ourselves,” he stated.