As the tech giants continue to announce massive layoffs, Meta has surprised analysts with its better-than-expected quarterly earnings report. The world’s biggest social media company encompassing Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp had revenue at US$32.5 billion in the October-December quarter, marking a 4% drop year-on-year – but that’s above forecasts, thanks to a bump in ad revenue from its Reels video feature, and new AI-powered recommended content algorithm. And it reported a 5% growth in daily users across its apps, including Facebook, which hit 2 billion daily users for the first time as newbies signed up and infrequent users logged back on. The platform reported 2.96 billion monthly active users by the year’s end – more than a quarter of the world’s population. But tricky times are still ahead, the company says, and there was barely a whisper from boss Mark Zuckerberg about his metaverse…