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Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

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Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#311

Post by sbrother »

IgorPartola wrote: post #234
omot wrote: post #169

This is from Mark Zuckerberg's post. I think it's a decent explanation of their performance. Historically Facebook always made these longer-term bets and they've typically paid off. "Before I get to that, I want to briefly touch on our Q4 results, which I know Sheryl and Dave are going to go deeper on. I'm proud of the work our teams did here. We shipped products, our community continued to grow, and businesses of al…

So in other words TikTok has made them have to pause and switch to prioritize Reels (which are in every way worse than TikTok BTW) and that means less eyeballs on ads. Honestly Facebook at this point is entirely unusable. My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people): Reels, half baked “memes” that are just really random thoughts from pe…

I'm still a Facebook user (over 30, with kids, friends all over the world, and lots of groups that I care about), but the Reels thing is making me seriously consider leaving for good. It's awful, cringeworthy intrusive clickbaity videos from random kids I've never heard of every few posts on my feed. I clicked the X to make it go away but surprise, it's back. At this point their demographic is not the TikTok demographic, and they're just going to drive their remaining users away trying to force that.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#312

Post by eloisius »

ra7 wrote: post #227
Aperocky wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well all of those point seem to sum up to: "We're getting beat by Tiktok and we're going to catch up by being more like tiktok" That doesn't exactly exude confidence.

Didn't they do the same thing when Snapchat took off and then blew it out of the water with Instagram Stories? There is a track record.

During the time they added stories to Instagram there was still more signal then noise. I enjoyed them because my friends shared casually and it was actually fun to go along on their vacation or bike ride, and not just see the perfectly composed photos which are usually the more polished summary of what the stories covered.

At this point, IG is Facebook. The feed is a slurry of signal, random suggestions, shitty ‘memes,’ and ads. When I stumble onto a Reel somehow, it’s the same crap. Stories worked for me because it was my friends. Reels is just random flotsam, and it seems like a ton of it is just reposts from TikTok anyway.

Meta’s repeating pattern is to enter every new format, screw with the chronology and cram it full of robo-content until it’s unbearable to look at. That Zuck calls chasing short-form video fad a long-term strategy is pretty telling. They have nothing but crap to sell, and if (if) Metaverse turns out to be anything, it will just be more crap, but you’d have to have your face inside a helmet in order to to enjoy the boomer arguments, shitty ‘memes,’ TikTok reposts and whatever else the content slurry that yields the most engagement is.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#313

Post by nabla9 »

codingkev wrote: post #22
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #15

This explains the shift to Meta. The current company is basically dying, and so they are going to bet the house on something new. Apple really did a number on them by restricting the data they can collect

Facebook is dying slowly in the developed world, that is true. However it is still growing in emerging markets. And most importantly: FB is still generating tons of cash to fund the other assets. WhatsApp has basically zero monetization right now but billions of users. Huge potential cash cow. Instagram still has a ton of potential for further optimized monetization. Think fully embedded 1-click buying for things lik…

No. Facebook lost users globally for the first time in its history. This is probably the biggest take. Facebook has peaked.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#314

Post by rdtwo »

newsclues wrote: post #277
zepto wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too late. Nobody is switching from TikTok to Facebook.

I think the key is that youth are going to TikTok and not Facebook. They lost the next generation of kids!

Yeah idk I thought the same last time but somehow Facebook always comes back buy buying everything And copying everyone

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#315

Post by parineum »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #274
endisneigh wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way, I literally bought a Quest 2 for everyone in my family. We have 4 of them and over $200 worth of games. After a couple months no one uses it anymore. It's sad lol. I do think it's amazing - Superhot is one of the best games I've ever played. But I get it - I don't know how to explain, but it seems like work to use it.

I guess you don't have a game PC? The PC games are amazing. If you don't have a good pc there's some streaming services coming online too like plutosphere that's doing a free beta now.

> The PC games are amazing

I'm a PC gamer and have a very capable PC but haven't bought any VR equipment because I don't know what I'd play.

The issue is probably that I'm not looking for an excuse to buy a headset, I'm waiting for a reason. I don't seek out information for VR and none of it is getting through to me.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#316

Post by matt_wilson_206 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #299
IgorPartola wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words TikTok has made them have to pause and switch to prioritize Reels (which are in every way worse than TikTok BTW) and that means less eyeballs on ads. Honestly Facebook at this point is entirely unusable. My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people): Reels, half baked “memes” that are just really random thoughts from pe…

> My feed is full of shit I don’t want I don't log in to Facebook very often, but when I do it's not bad at all. I scroll through a few updates from friends and family and catch up with a few people, then I close it for another week or two. There isn't just one "Facebook" that we all see, obviously. Your feed is going to be a reflection of the groups you've joined and the friends you keep (and haven't muted). If you'…

Finally, someone with a similar Facebook experience to my own. I've been reading threads about how horrific the FB feed is for years, but my own is literally 99% updates from friends I don't get to see, and an occasional ad (that is interesting more often than not). Glad to know I'm not completely alone!

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#317

Post by paxys »

dmurray wrote: post #96
gzer0 wrote: post #59

Here are the results that caused this: - Earnings per share: $3.67 vs $3.84 expected - Revenue: $33.67 billion vs $33.4 billion expected Facebook also missed estimates with user numbers. - Daily Active Users (DAUs): 1.93 billion vs 1.95 billion expected - Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.91 billion vs 2.95 billion expected - Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $11.57 vs $11.38 expected Future guidance was the biggest miss…

It's not really plausible that the market can predict Facebook's earnings to within 5% and that such a small miss would cause a rational investor to value Facebook 20% lower. This seems more like a symptom of the market being generally skittish, with a small side of "expected" earnings actually being a low-biased estimate, so it's more like a 10% miss.

Stock price changes after earnings are almost always in reaction to changes in future guidance rather than the past quarter's performance.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#318

Post by GekkePrutser »

alexdias wrote: post #49
zwkrt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of buying something based on an advertisement and not a need is foreign to me. What is a kind of ad that you consider to be “relevant”? I just block all of them so I might just not be aware of the potential.

An ad that is “relevant” to me is an ad that leads me to think “yes, this item is exactly what I was looking for”. Sometimes you know you want to buy something (let’s say a backpack) but you don’t know which brand/model to go for. This is where ads come in: a backpack company can run ads that should be shown to people interested in buying backpacks, and it’s potentially a win-win: you find a cool item that you buy, a…

It's only really a win-win if the backpack was the best choice you could have made if you were fully informed about the entire market.

And that best choice is probably from the manufacturer that spends the most on making their product. Not the one spending the most on advertising. This undermines the win-win concept.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#319

Post by ts4z »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #296
asd88 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the companies whose stock price has been affected the most are making up for the loss by giving more stock. I’d expect Facebook to do the same to retain their talent if the stock drops significantly.

Off topic: when companies give out stock like this, where is it coming from? Are they printing shares out of thin air or buying back shares to give to employees?

Depends on the company. Dilution is normal, but some companies are buying back stock to use up excess cash; in this case, they can issue those shares to employees.
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