Facebook users spent about 50 million hours a day less on the social media site due to changes that reduced viral videos, even before the company announced a series of changes to the News Feed that may further reduce user engagement.

Facebook's 1.40 billion daily active users was up 14 percent from a year earlier, but below analysts' estimate of 1.41 billion for the fourth quarter, according to financial data and analytics firm FactSet.

The number of daily users in the United States and Canada fell for the first time in Facebook's history, dipping in the company's home market by 700,000 from a quarter earlier to 184 million.

Total revenue, though, showed little impact, rising 47 percent to $12.97 billion.

Facebook Inc offered reassurances to investors on Wednesday that its digital ad business would remain highly profitable, despite the dip in usage.

Analysts had wondered about the resilience of the world's largest social media network, which is making changes to its products to deter foreign influence campaigns like ones that it says Russia has carried out and to stem the spread of sensationalism.

Facebook executives expressed optimism, saying the changes they were making in response to criticism would be healthy for the business in the long term and might not even hurt much in the short term.

"I want to be clear: The most important driver of our business has never been time spent by itself. It's the quality of the conversations and connections," chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told analysts.

The overhaul of Facebook's newsfeed was prompted in part by its disclosure last year that Russian agents used Facebook to try to sway American voters from 2015 to 2017, an allegation that Moscow denies. Facebook said 126 million Americans may have seen Russian-backed political ads and posts.

 

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