Facebook changed its key metric from 'monthly active users' to 'monthly active people'

Facebook no longer measures its success by the number of monthly active users it has.

Instead, the social network is now measuring "monthly active people," CTO Mike Schroepfer said on stage at Vox Media's Code Conference.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to change the metric to make sure that employees always keep its real, human users in mind, Schroepfer explained. That's how Facebook now talks about all of its products internally.

The change is purely a semantic one: Facebook is not actually changing the way it measures the size of its audience.

"We have a platform that gives people voice," added Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was on stage with Schroepfer at the conference. "We take that incredibly seriously."