Revenue at the Facebook app is forecast to increase 18% next year to $135.1 billion, according to eMarketer, while Instagram's growth is expected to top 30% to $60.5 billion.ДЇor Meta to finance its bold and costly ambitions to move the company to the so-called metaverse - a world of virtual and augmented reality experiences - it needs Instagram to keep growing and throwing off hefty profits. In the time Instagram's user base has doubled, Facebook's has grown by just 30%. The main Facebook app had 2.91 billion monthly active users as of October, and expansion is slowing compared to Instagram. Whether pressure from Blumenthal and others in Washington forces any changes at Instagram is a looming issue, because Facebook relies on the app's user growth. 'That seems to be what Instagram is saying in your testimony. 'Some of the Big Tech companies have said, 'Trust us,' ' said Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Wednesday. 'I believe that the time for self-policing and self-regulation is over,' said Sen. Many senators have compared Facebook's strategy of getting teens addicted to one-time practices of Big Tobacco. The company said it would pause the project, but wouldn't commit to shutting it down.Д¬ongressional committees have since held multiple hearings about the impact of social media on teenagers, including Mosseri's Senate testimony on Dec. Blessing and a curseДЄfter the series, lawmakers called on the company to stop its development of an Instagram product for kids under 13. In its third-quarter earnings report in October, the company said it would make Reels a core part of Facebook and Instagram services to try and appeal to users between the ages of 18 and 29. Facebook launched the Reels video-sharing feature in August 2020. Zuckerberg responded the way he often does - by cloning the competition. 'It did to video sharing and short-video sharing what Snap did to messaging and disrupting that particular demographic.' 'TikTok did an extraordinarily good job of winning at that youngest demographic over the past four or five years,' said Daniel Newman, principal analyst at Futurum Research, which focuses on digital technology.

In terms of downloads, TikTok was installed 596.1 million times globally this year across Apple and Google devices, topping 570.7 million installations for Instagram, according to SensorTower. 'It tells me that even with the challenge of TikTok recently, Instagram is still certainly relevant to people,' Heger said.ДЄccording to findings of a survey published last month by Forrester, 63% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 used TikTok on a weekly basis this year, compared with 57% for Instagram. Heger said the speed of expansion to 2 billion users is particularly important given the hefty competition that's emerged from TikTok, which has surged in popularity by making it simple for people to create and share short, funny videos.

'That's a pretty significant compound annual growth rate of users,' said David Heger, an analyst at Edward Jones.

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