Facebook’s (FB) web traffic has nearly halved over the past two years and YouTube is all set to occupy Facebook’s spot. According to a study by market research firm SimilarWeb, since 2016, Facebook’s monthly page visits have fallen to 4.7 billion from 8.5 billion.
YouTube, meanwhile, has seen an increase in traffic, reaching 4.5 billion visits last month, and is on track to surpass Facebook to become the second most-visited website in the US. If YouTube manages to dethrone Facebook, this will make Alphabet (GOOGL) subsidiary and YouTube-owner, Google, the proud holder of the top two positions for the most popular websites in the US. Google remains in the No. 1 position.
Facebook’s mobile app is seeing growth along with Instagram and Messenger
The study states that Facebook’s mobile app is seeing growth along with Instagram and Messenger, and total engagement on the social media platform is growing. This indicates that Facebook’s overall health is not solely dependent on one area alone and the company is still strong enough.
Facebook has taken some hard hits to its reputation following the data privacy scandals and subsequent controversies. The company, along with peers like Twitter (TWTR), have seen some impacts from GDPR too. For its most recent quarter, Facebook’s user count increased only slightly compared to the previous quarter.
Twitter too saw a slight sequential decrease in users in the US for its most recent quarter which led to a nasty tumble in its stock after the social media platform announced its results. Snap’s (SNAP) daily active users fell during the just-concluded quarter, which the company believes was due to the redesign fiasco over its messaging app.