In this article, we’ll look at all the Facebook figures and statistics that matter to professionals in 2021, both internationally and domestically.
Before getting into the heart of the matter, here is a reminder of the important dates that have marked the history of Facebook, since its creation in 2004, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that will allow us to better contextualize the figures and statistics that follow.
February 2004: Facebook (then called “thefacebook”) is founded by students Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, Saverin and Hughes.
June 2004: Facebook moves its headquarters to Palo Alto, California.
December 2004: Facebook reaches 1 million users.
September 2005: Thefacebook drops the “the” and becomes simply “Facebook.
October 2005: Facebook adds photos and goes international.
July 2008: Launch of Facebook for iPhone.
February 2009: The “Like” button is introduced.
July 2010: Over 500 million users are active on Facebook.
December 2011: Facebook unveils Timeline, its new interface.
May 2012: Facebook goes public and raises $16 billion, giving the company a value of $102.4 billion per share.
September 2012: Facebook closes the purchase of Instagram.
October 2012: the milestone of 1 billion active members is reached
October 2012: membership reaches the one billion mark.
January 2013: Facebook unveils Graph Search.
February 2014: The acquisition of WhatsApp is announced.
July 2016: There are now more than 1 billion Messenger users per month.
October 2016: Facebook Marketplace is launched, allowing users to buy and sell products.
April 2018: Marc Zuckerberg testifies before Congress about concerns about data breaches and privacy.
Facebook in the world
As we said in the introduction, Facebook has more than 2.80 billion monthly active users at the beginning of 2022, a 12% increase compared to June 2020 (2.7 billion)
Here’s how those users break down by continent:
Asia-Pacific: 1.199 billion
Europe: 419 million
North America: 258 million
Rest of the world: 921 million
France: 38 million
On a daily scale, Facebook says that by the end of 2020, the platform had 1.845 billion daily active users, a 12 percent increase over the same period in 2019. And those users spend an average of 35 minutes a day on the U.S.-based social networking platform.
Among the other remarkable overall statistics about Facebook is the number of people who use one of the Facebook group’s apps every day, whether it’s Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, or Facebook. It is estimated that in total, the different platforms have more than 2.6 billion daily active users and 3.3 billion monthly active users at the beginning of 2021.
Which countries have the most Facebook users?
India comes in first place, with 290 million users, followed by the US (190 million), Indonesia (140), Brazil (130), Mexico (89), the Philippines (76) and Vietnam (64).
Where is China?
The American social networking application is banned in the Middle Kingdom.
Age and gender
The majority of Facebook users are men, with 57%. Women represent 43%.
In terms of age, we know that 25% of the audience is between 18 and 24 years old, 32% of users are between 25 and 34 years old, and 26% are between 35 and 54 years old.
It is therefore the 25-34 year olds who are the most present on the network.
Why do people use Facebook?
According to a Statista source, the majority of users (88%) use the social media platform to stay in touch with friends and family, 33% are on Facebook for entertainment, 23% to receive information, learn about current events, and 17% to follow brands or businesses.
We also note that 11% of active Facebook users use the platform to strengthen their professional network.
Facebook, the company and its financial results
Facebook is present and well established in more than 70 cities and capitals around the world, in Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. The platform is hosted in 15 data centers located in several countries around the world.
There are about 60,000 employees working for Facebook on the 5 continents at the beginning of 2021, an increase of 30% compared to the end of 2019.
Regarding the company’s financial results, its revenue amounted to some $85 billion at the end of 2020, an increase of 22% compared to 2019 ($70 billion).
Specifically, the U.S. firm’s revenue was $28 billion for Q4 2020, up 33% from Q4 2019.
Interestingly, 97.9% of the revenue is generated by advertising revenue.
Facebook’s annual profit, meanwhile, is almost $30 billion at the end of fiscal 2020 versus $18.4 billion in 2019. This represents an increase of 58%.
Facebook’s Q4 2020 profit exceeds $11 billion, up 53% from Q4 2019.
Facebook for brands and businesses
According to Facebook, there are more than 160 million businesses on the world’s largest social network, including 80 million SMBs.
We see that Facebook is a massively used marketing tool for marketing agencies and advertisers: 96% of those working in B2C marketing use Facebook, compared to 91% in B2B.
In addition, more than 50% of marketers plan to increase their Facebook Ads budget for 2021.
Media brands produce the most Facebook posts per day, with an average of 7.5 posts. Otherwise, sports brands publish an average of 3.4 daily posts, followed by premium brands with 1 post per day. Food and beverage brands have the fewest daily Facebook posts, with only 0.3 posts per day on average.
Engagement and reach
Engagement: the average engagement rate for a Facebook post is around 3.4%, 6.1% for a video, 4.42% for an image, 2.72% for links.
Reach: the average organic reach is 5.2%, while the Paid reach is 28%.
As a reminder, Facebook reach rate generally refers to a brand’s ability to reach its fans when it makes an organic, or paid, post/publication.
Interactions: the average Facebook user “likes” 13 posts, comments 5 times, shares 1 post and clicks on 12 ads each month
For Facebook pages with less than 10,000 fans, the average organic reach is 4.6, while the average engagement rate for a post is 8.2%.
A Facebook page with more than 10,000 fans shows lower stats, with an average organic reach rate of 2.34% and an average engagement rate for a post that is just over 2.1%.
The highest engagement time on Facebook in North America is Wednesday at 11 a.m. (Central Time Zone), as it relates to the year 2020.
Using user data, social media data analysis platforms have identified the best times to publish a post on each social network.
And it’s the same for the other days of the week. We notice that engagement is high around 10, 11 am. This is of course due to changes in work habits, related to the Covid-19 epidemic. The day everyone goes back to work at the office, it is likely that the optimal engagement times will change again.
Video on Facebook
First of all, we note that the platform’s users consume a staggering 100 million hours of video content per day!
Here are some interesting figures to refine the analysis on the video format:
Facebook generates nearly 8 billion video views per day.
85% of Facebook users watch videos with the sound turned off.
More than 20% of videos are streamed live.
Facebook Watch has 1.2 billion monthly users
Facebook Watch has 140 million daily users worldwide, who spend an average of 26 minutes a day watching videos.
Native Facebook videos are used by nearly 50% of marketers, coming in 2nd just behind YouTube videos (55%). Facebook Stories are in 4th place, with 500 million daily users and are used by 32% of marketers.
Another insight, indicative of the importance of the mobile medium, is that mobile-optimized video content has a 27% higher probability of generating user engagement compared to video content that is not optimized for mobile viewing. And the same is true for ads.
Video is one of the most effective ways to communicate with customers, but to capture attention, you need a mobile-focused strategy that makes the viewing experience fun and easy.
Mobile support
Facebook users now use their mobile devices almost exclusively to access Facebook
According to sources provided by Facebook, more than 98% of users access their Facebook page via any type of mobile device, and 79% use mobile support exclusively. This is especially important for businesses that have Facebook pages. When creating Facebook ads and posts for a desktop format, you should always make sure that they are also optimized for mobile.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger attracts a whopping 2 billion users worldwide. That puts Facebook’s messenger in second place worldwide, behind WhatsApp (which is owned by Facebook!), but ahead of WeChat, Telegram, and Snapchat.
According to figures provided by Facebook, businesses and individuals exchange about 20 billion messages on Messenger every month.
Here’s some other interesting information on the subject:
410 million users use video chat on Messenger each month.
More than 40 million businesses use Facebook Messenger as a tool for their business.
300,000 chabots are active on Facebook Messenger.
64% of users say they would rather send a message via Facebook Messenger to a business than make a phone call or send an email, regardless of age.
17 billion photos are shared on Facebook Messenger every month.
Facebook Gaming
Facebook Gaming saw a 75% growth in viewing hours in Q2 2020 compared to Q1, peaking at 342 million hours. This is of course due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the containment measures that forced us to stay home.
If we compare June 2019 and June 2020, the number of gaming viewing hours increased from 111 to 334 million hours, a 200% increase within a year.
Facebook Workplace
Facebook Workplace had 5 million paying users at the end of 2020, a huge increase of 2 million compared to March 2020.
According to figures provided by Facebook, more than 170,000 “Work Groups” were created during the lockdown periods to continue working on a daily basis.
Facebook applications
Facebook is doing well in the area of most downloaded apps in 2020. The platform is in third place, behind Whatsapp, which it owns, and it is ahead of Instagram, in fourth place, which it also owns. These three applications are therefore in the lead, only outpaced by Tiktok, the number one application of 2020. Note that Messenger is in 6th position, behind Zoom.
