Facebook now has 300 million daily active users across both Messenger and Facebook, reports VentureBeat. Facebook will monetise Facebook Stories and Messenger Stories by letting all advertisers run ads on the platform in the coming weeks. Facebook first tested advertising for Stories in May this year.
Although Facebook hasn’t given a breakdown of the exact DAUs between Messenger and Facebook,
- Facebook Stories alone had 150 million DAUs as of May
- while Messenger Stories had 70 million DAUs a year ago
- Instagram Stories is still the most successful platform with the largest DAUs: as of June, Instagram itself had 400 million DAUs
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Stories will overtake Feed content in the coming years, as users want to share more spontaneous content. As of July, Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users, 1 billion users on Instagram, and 1.3 billion users on Messenger.
Note that Facebook took the Stories format to WhatsApp as well with a 24-hour time bound “Status update” where users could post images and videos on their WhatsApp.
Meanwhile, Snapchat Stories loses users
Snapchat is now losing ‘Stories’ users: in its last earnings call in August, the company lost 3 million DAUs from the previous quarters. Snapchat Stories currently has 188 million DAUs. Snapchat first piloted the ‘Stories’ format, which Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger (all owned by Facebook) gradually copied onto their platforms.
