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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

#491
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, Libra had absolutely massive potential with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp behind it. Stabilized by multiple fiat currencies it would hold value well, and it could power a global Venmo (via WhatsApp), capture a large portion of the entire remittance market, simplify e-commerce payments, and maybe even support micro transactions at scale. I’m sure I’m missing other large benefits. The West is mostly so…

What the hell would be it’s point? Why would it need Satoshi’s Holy Blockchain? Nobody in the mainstream consumer space wants an irreversible cryptocurrency. Why not just use a database? FB picking up Libra is just another loop in the blockchain’s solution in search of a problem.

> Nobody in the mainstream consumer space wants an irreversible cryptocurrency.

Venmo and Zelle are both irreversible and mainstream but can't be used globally.

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

#492

The data center infrastructure that Facebook (Meta) has is probably in the top 5 in this world (behind only Amazon, Microsoft, Google). They might want to become a cloud infrastructure provider for some side money and buy themselves some time to figure out this Metaverse fantasy :) Hey, AWS started because Amazon wanted to lease out their spare infrastructure capacity.

Kevin Xu of Interconnected wrote an interesting analysis post about Why Is Facebook Not in the Cloud Business[1] its worth a read, he points out that they have the tech for it but they don't seem interested and even if they were the hard part isn't necessarily the technical aspect its building the human part

>>"The tougher part is perhaps not technical, but human. Facebook will have to build out an enterprise sales and support team that is culturally and operationally very different from running an ad-supported social network. Google, also a primarily ad-supported company, suffered from this “identity crisis” and is still trying to catch up to AWS and Azure, despite offering what many believe is a superior technical product."

He also points out they also have a trust deficient due to all the privacy and misinformation scandals.

[1]https://interconnected.blog/why-is-facebook-not-in-the-cloud...

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

#493
post #273
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…

I wonder why they didn't buy TikTok when it was starting to become popular like they did with Instagram or Whatsapp. Maybe they thought it was going to fail like Vine and other short video platforms.

Even if US govt allowed FB to buy tiktok, there is no way ccp would approve the deal. They have a board seat.

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and unlike, say, Google or Apple, I don't think Facebook has really ever had more than one big payoff idea. If that core business model/idea has seen most of its growth, and may even decline, then there is really not much reason to expect it to find any other way to keep growing. They are big, they are profitable, but they are not going to be growing fast in the future, and one could argue should be valued (…

> unlike, say, Google or Apple, I don't think Facebook has really ever had more than one big payoff idea. Interestingly, by revenue Apple is more of a one-trick pony than Facebook. iPhone sales are fully half their revenue, and almost all of their software income is totally dependent on iPhones as well. Meanwhile at Meta, Instagram revenue is roughly equal to Facebook revenue.

My reading of that comment is that FB itself hasn’t innovated in quite some time. FB “innovation” has come through acquisition. The core company hasn’t produced anything unique or compelling in over a decade. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus were all acquisitions.

I fundamentally don’t think FB can innovate. And I don’t think the regulatory situation will allow them to continue acquiring to grow.

An example of this changing landscape is FB failed attempt to acquire Giphy. Can FB survive if they are forced to compete and innovate on their own? I doubt it.

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

#495
post #155
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay, another platform without the possibility to become decentralized, with a leader who basically opposes standards based development, great step forwards.

Monolithic platforms are significantly more feature-full and user-friendly than standards based development, and thus are the ones that actually experience significant adoption. This is just a fundamental reality.

> more feature-full and user-friendly than standards based development

That is shortsighted. Email, which is standards based, has been around for 50 years.

I have a strong sense that Signal won't be around in 2064.

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

#496
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…

> My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level

Maybe A is a consequence of B?

If you don't let them track you, you get random advertising. And random advertising is painful to watch. I'm not advocating for targeted advertising, just stating a simple fact.

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

#497
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, I don't use FB or TikTok, but isn't FB just trying to copycat TikTok? They would never do that, they've never done it in the past.

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

#498
post #227

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.

TikTok has way more momentum than Snapchat had at the time.

Snapchat DAUs today: 300M

TikTok DAUs today: 1B

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

#499
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would argue that they destroyed Instagram in the process. It set them on a path where they add more and more "features" to Instagram for legitimate strategic reasons, but in the process it turned a focused app into something now approaching the hot garbage that is the Facebook.

This book explains very well why and how FB destroyed Instagram from day one, cutting its core values (and therefore long-term value) into pieces.

https://www.amazon.com/No-Filter-Inside-Story-Instagram-eboo...

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