Facebook Confirms Drop In Teen Use, Valuation Falls $18 Billion
As we reported last week, teens are not as enamored with Facebook as they once were. In fact, Facebook has lost its crown to Twitter as the most popular social network for American teenagers, according to Piper Jaffray's biannual survey among thousands of U.S. teens. On yesterday's earnings call, Facebook confirmed the slide.
"We did see a decrease in daily users specifically among younger teens," CFO David Ebersman said during the call. Despite strong mobile ad growth, the admission of teen slippage, spooked investors. The stock slid from $57.10 to as low as $47.40. As Venture Beat pointed our, Ebersman's 12 words cost Facebook $18 billion of valuation.
Given the numbers shown in the Statista chart below, Facebook's decision to acquire Instagram appears smart in retrospect, as the photo sharing platform is proving very popular with a younger audience.
