About 40% of the world’s population is now on Facebook — but most of the new users came from outside the US and Canada

• Facebook now has 3 billion monthly users, but most of the growth came from outside the US and Canada.
• That’s a 6% on-year increase and marks a fourth straight quarter of monthly user growth for Facebook.
• Meta is halfway through its “year of efficiency,” which saw it go through three staggered rounds of layoffs.

Over three billion people — almost 40% of the world’s population — are active on Facebook every month as of June 30, the company said during its second-quarter results announcement. 

That’s a 6% on-year increase and marks a fourth straight quarter of monthly user growth for Facebook. And while the app’s monthly users have more-or-less increased quarter on quarter, there were panic signals when Facebook’s daily active users shrank for the first time in the app’s history in the last quarter of 2021. 

However, it’s not all good news for the company — most of the app’s new users came from outside the US and Canada, signaling its popularity could be plateauing in its home market.

Facebook’s monthly active users in the US and Canada increased by only around one million, while it actually dropped by two million in Europe, per the company’s earnings presentation.

The largest increase in Facebook users came from the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world, at around 25 and 16 million monthly active users, respectively.

Overall, Facebook’s parent Meta announced that the number of monthly active users across its family of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads — reached almost 3.9 billion as of June 30, its highest ever reported.

Meta launched Threads as a text-focused rival to Twitter on July 5, outside the reporting period for the second quarter. The app amassed over 100 million users within its first five days.

This upswing for Facebook and Meta’s family of apps marks a rebound for the company — Meta is halfway through its “year of efficiency,” which saw the company go through three staggered rounds of layoffs, Insider reported.

After the second wave of layoffs, the company had slashed its workforce by 24% of its original headcount of 87,000, Insider’s Jyoti Mann reported in April. 

Meta’s layoffs make up the second-largest workforce reduction in percentage among tech giants, trailing only behind Twitter, now called X, which laid off 80% of its employees since October. 

Meta’s quarterly revenue rose to $31.9 billion in the second quarter, an 11% increase on-year and exceeding Wall Street expectations of $31.1 billion, per Bloomberg. This sent Meta’s stock price surging by 6.84% in after-hours trading.