Facebook Changes Definition of Monthly Active Users

The social network said in an email to SocialTimes that it “wanted to provide a cleaner metric,” so starting with its third-quarter-2015 earnings report, it no longer counts what it called “third-party pings,” or people who did not access Facebook itself, but shared content or activity via Facebook Login-integrated websites or applications.

Facebook’s previous definition of MAUs follows:

We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, used our Messenger app (and is also a registered Facebook user) or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website or application that is integrated with Facebook, in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement.

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