What Is Monthly Active Users (MAU)?
Let me explain what Monthly Active Users, or MAU, really means. It's a key performance indicator that social networking companies and other online businesses use to count the number of unique users who've visited their site in the past month. They typically identify these users through things like an ID number, email, or username.
You should know that MAU is a solid way to gauge the overall health of an online business. It forms the foundation for other metrics on the site, helps evaluate how effective marketing campaigns are, and gives insights into current and potential customers' experiences. If you're an investor in social media, pay attention to MAU reports—they can directly impact a company's stock price.
Who Uses MAU, and How?
Companies often don't use the same rules when calculating MAU, and there's no industry standard for what counts as a 'user' or 'active.' That's why some critics say MAU leads to unfair comparisons between competitors. I think it's only truly useful when combined with other metrics, and honestly, its relevance is questionable in some cases.
As a quantitative measure, MAU just counts visitors—it doesn't factor in the depth or quality of their experience. For instance, some companies count anyone who accesses the site as a user, while others require a login and password. Others have their own specific requirements for what makes a user 'active.'
Take Meta, formerly Facebook, for example. They define an MAU as a registered, logged-in user who's interacted with the site or Messenger app in the last 30 days. They also track daily active users with similar criteria but on a daily basis.
On the other hand, X, which was Twitter before Elon Musk bought it, stopped using MAU and switched to monetizable daily active usage, or mDAU. That metric counts authenticated users who access the platform daily through the site or apps that show ads. So, you have to ask: if their metrics don't align, how valid are the comparisons?
Limits of MAU
The big issue with MAU is the lack of uniform standards for its components, which makes comparing social media trends tricky. Back in 2015, Meta updated their MAU definition to exclude people who only shared content via integrated sites without being active on Facebook itself.
After acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta adjusted again. In 2022, they shifted to 'Family' metrics like monthly and daily active people across their platforms. This change boosted their numbers by about 2% year-over-year because it accounts for users on multiple linked services.
For December 2022, their Family daily active people were 2.96 billion, compared to 2.0 billion daily active users. The monthly figures showed a similar gap. This highlights how measuring 'people' versus 'users' captures nearly a billion more in usage. If other platforms aren't making similar changes, how do they stack up against their own past numbers?
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as an active user? It's anyone who uses the service or product in a given period, but each business defines 'active' their own way—until standards come along.
How do you calculate MAU? Divide the sum of each month's unique users by 12; that's the average most businesses report.
What's the difference between MAU and DAU? They measure how many customers use the service monthly or daily, based on the company's definition of active.
The Bottom Line
Monthly active users is a metric that platforms, websites, and businesses use to track engagement. It's good for counting accounts using a service, but it's getting outdated for some, especially with industry centralization. Meta's shift away from it makes sense, and while variations make comparisons hard, it's still useful for smaller platforms measuring engagement.
