Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

investor.fb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 223 posts

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#161

Post by georgeecollins »

giantrobot wrote: post #46
pclmulqdq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a less cynical point of view, they have basically bet the farm on "Metaverse." They can no longer buy out competitors (the FTC will block them), and they need a new monopoly to keep printing money. If they can make even a moderate success out of the metaverse project, they can get out of the hole. If they can make a massive success of the project, they will easily be the new Apple. However, I'm not sure that a r…

> If they can make a massive success of the project, they will easily be the new Apple. In what way? If Facebook wanted to replace the iPhone with some "metaverse" device they would need to be able to build a device way more advanced than their current offerings at a price point equal to or less than the iPhone. That means they would need to make up for thousands of person years of engineering, manufacturing, and ope…

>> If Facebook wanted to replace the iPhone with some "metaverse" device they would need to be able to build a device way more advanced than their current offerings at a price point equal to or less than the iPhone.

Once upon a time Apple was a much smaller company. They strategized to one day have something they called a "dynabook". Their first attempt, the Newton was not good at all and much too expensive.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#162

Post by debacle »

rossdavidh wrote: post #157
debacle wrote: post #142

I expect Facebook is in a better ARPU position as the ad market continues to implode than Google. I further expect that, as Google becomes more desperate, more users will flock to non-Google products due to the poorer UX on e.g. YouTube. Facebook may have a rough 2022, but I think they will probably be fine.

I'm genuinely curious, why would you think FB is in a better position in the ad market than Google? I find it hard to believe that, if forced to cut one or the other from their ad budget, most companies would choose FB ads over Google. But, perhaps I am missing something?

FB ads are higher value, less obtrusive, and despite it's reputation in tech circles, FB has a better reputation with genpop than Google does.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#163

Post by PheonixPharts »

cm2012 wrote: post #98

I am very bullish on FB: 1) Founder still has majority voting shares, gives a lot more freedom. 2) I think the Metaverse stuff will pay off in the long run 3) They are making the changes necessary to compete with TikTok. I am buying shares now at this price

> 1) Founder still has majority voting shares

I work at a startup that recently IPO'd and one thing that surprises me is the number of people who have gone through several rounds of promotion that have never worked at another organization. You can easily tell who is who by the level of maturity they have in their decision making. Even senior directors that have never work some place else have a very visible lack of understanding that "things are different elsewhere".

I realized the other day that Zuckerberg is one of these employees. He has never worked someplace else, has no idea what other ways of doing things exist, and has only ever known one way of doing things.

Having someone like this have majority voting shares tells me that a essentially a kid is still running the show. Zuckerberg got incredibly lucky in his first job as founder, but has never developed the skills to pivot an existing company into a new space. In every role I've interacted with from software engineer, PM to designer having only experience at one company is a huge negative in solving new problems, I don't know why anyone would think that somehow a CEO would be exempt from this problem.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#164

Post by lvl102 »

alangibson wrote: post #45

On the metaverse question: does anyone seriously believe Facebook can innovate, let alone build a new industry?

FB/META is still one of the leading organizations when it comes to AI/ML research. They are also sitting on incredible infrastructure that they can open up, just as Amazon did with AWS. I really hope Zuckerberg hires someone to tackle more realistic growth opportunities while he plays around with VRs. I think META should roll out cloud, ecommerce, and payment products.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#165

Post by pjfin123 »

potatolicious wrote: post #125
rightbyte wrote: post #84

"Headcount was 83,553 as of June 30, 2022, an increase of 32% year-over-year." Like ... why? They hired 20 000 employees net in a year? And Zuckerberg now somehow says that they need to tighten the belt?

I suspect a few reasons, some of which are shared by all of the tech companies that over-hired: - Prestige. There are a lot of companies (especially VC funded startups) that have massively over-hired because a large headcount of high-end engineers is a signal to the market (and importantly, VCs) as to your seriousness. - Talent denial to competitors. If you don't want anyone to catch up in a space (say, VR) you can g…

I've heard the talent denial to competitors reason but even for companies as big as FB and Google this seems unrealistic to me. Is hiring an expensive engineer really worth it to prevent one of many other potentially competing companies from hiring them? This makes sense for very specialized roles but for general engineering it seems like there would be more cost than benefit.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#166

Post by daydream »

lvl102 wrote: post #164
alangibson wrote: post #45

On the metaverse question: does anyone seriously believe Facebook can innovate, let alone build a new industry?

FB/META is still one of the leading organizations when it comes to AI/ML research. They are also sitting on incredible infrastructure that they can open up, just as Amazon did with AWS. I really hope Zuckerberg hires someone to tackle more realistic growth opportunities while he plays around with VRs. I think META should roll out cloud, ecommerce, and payment products.

An AWS B2B play seems like a bad fit for facebooks culture. On the other hand I agree going deeper into ecommerce and payments (without the crypto baggage), it seems like a no brainer.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#167

Post by fairity »

cletus wrote: post #57

Disclaimer: Ex-Facebooker. The first thing to know about Facebook is that they view the social media landscape in two dimensions: format and audience size. Format here means text -> audio -> video. So if you look at the match up between audience of 1:1,000,000 and text you'll find Twitter, for example. This has served FB quite well but what happens after video, if anything? Well, the company believes the next two ste…

> The Metaverse. Much like VR in general, I don't think is ever going to be mainstream. It doesn't solve any problem.

VR will eventually reach the point where meeting someone in person will feel virtually the same as meeting someone in VR.

The problem VR solves is that there's a vast amount of resources currently being spent on transit (i.e. work & social commuting), housing (e.g. offices & hangout spaces), and ancillary products simply to meet face-to-face with other humans.

When VR reaches the tipping point where people really don't care if they're meeting IRL or via VR because it feels the same, all those resources can be saved or re-directed.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#168

Post by colinmhayes »

kristopolous wrote: post #54
pclmulqdq wrote: post #3

Lower revenue than Q2 of 2021 and higher expenses. They're on track to have significantly lower net income this year than last year. Au revoir, Facebook.

The only thing that matters to see their trajectory is their performance with respect to their industry peers. So assuming they're just an online entertainment company, Netflix is higher, Twitter is about the same, Disney is probably on the up, Activision and EA have similar downward trends, so I don't know, might still be too noisy to tell. Personally if I were a betting man I'd be shorting them hard. People are qui…

Netflix has much bigger problems than Facebook. Meta only has one real competitor right now, and they can easily coexist since they’re both free. Netflix is actively being canibalized by the rest of the media market because it turns out that making tv and movies isn’t a zero marginal cost business and is largely a zero sum game.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#169

Post by colinmhayes »

civilized wrote: post #37
pclmulqdq wrote: post #3

Lower revenue than Q2 of 2021 and higher expenses. They're on track to have significantly lower net income this year than last year. Au revoir, Facebook.

At the current rate of year-over-year decline in operating income, they'll be losing money in two short years. Then they'll be as dead as eternal money-losing cash pit Uber. someone whispers in my ear ... correction, I'm being told Uber is still not dead. I know, I know, I'm as confused as you are.

Revenue only down 1%. Their operating income went down because they hired 20,000 people. They can fire them whenever they want and be right back where they were profit wise. Their content is still free to them unlike Netflix after all.

Re: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results

#170

Post by netheril96 »

fullshark wrote: post #133
cm2012 wrote: post #98

I am very bullish on FB: 1) Founder still has majority voting shares, gives a lot more freedom. 2) I think the Metaverse stuff will pay off in the long run 3) They are making the changes necessary to compete with TikTok. I am buying shares now at this price

It is funny that so many engineers in the valley argued that (1) was essential for tech companies, and at the same time bash FB and Zuckerberg's potentially forward looking (but unprofitable for a long time) bet (2) on the metaverse. Some bean counters would never do that, and they basically want the bean counters to control FB instead of Zuckerberg.

It’s not funny at all. A dictator controlled company moves faster, but both faster to success and to failure. That we don’t want bean counters at the helm doesn’t mean that the opposite is automatically a win.
Post reply on HN