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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

#211

Post by p1necone »

JCM9 wrote: post #93

Facebook’s core business model appears to be in decline. They don’t have a very diversified revenue stream despite trying various side businesses. This is the market worried that Facebook’s best days are behind it. Facebook is betting the farm on the metaverse stuff but without meaningful financial results that’s not going to placate market concerns over what looks like a downhill future for the core businesses. Face…

I don't get metaverse - they seem to be throwing lots of money and people at it, and hyping it up like it's the future. But from what I've seen so far they've just built VRChat, but worse. It's been done before by other people, it's not a new thing at all (Second Life released almost 20 years ago).

This isn't a project that benefits from any of Facebooks strengths - game development companies are much better positioned to make compelling social VR experiences like this.

"Metaverses" in general are a cool 80s sci-fi novel concept. But they're just video game environments with better-than-typical communication features - hyping them up with piles of marketing and betting the farm on your specific one being successful seems like an incredibly poor business move.

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

#212

Post by Aperocky »

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…

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.

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

#213

Post by ojbyrne »

Thaxll wrote: post #143
intrepidsoldier wrote: post #71

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.

They have only 2 DC, what exatly can they sell, on top of that they built it for Facebook so how is it marketable?

They have 18: https://datacenters.fb.com/#locations

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

#214

Post by foxfluff »

friedman23 wrote: post #24
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.

Just because you block ads doesn't mean you are immune to advertisements. How many of your interests are shaped by media campaigns. Even if you go and choose to buy things based on "need" (which I doubt). How do you choose which to buy of the various things that satisfy your needs? Maybe you go to one of many consumer reporting sites? Maybe you look at reviews? How do you know those are truly unbiased, they aren't mo…

I've seen a comment like this quite a few times now and I am curious: what exactly is the goal of pointing out that advertisement affects your life somehow, to someone who said they can't think of a relevant ad? It's not like they claimed they're immune to advertisement. They just can't think of a relevant ad, and I'm in the same boat, unless you twist the implied definition of "an ad" enough; a common trait for these threads is to start attacking the "marketing doesn't affect me" straw man, which is of course easy to attack when you go down the everything is marketing line of thought.

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

#215

Post by voisin »

altdataseller wrote: post #184

Not 1 mention of Tiktok? IDFA is probably not the main reason they had a bad report. Tiktok is quickly dominating time spent and the reason active users are plateauing.

TikTok is referred to in their discussion of more heavily focusing on Reels. I use both only tangentially and find Reels to very clearly be less enjoyable than TikTok, but I am probably not the target market.

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

#216

Post by endisneigh »

dymk wrote: post #120
mjfl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook is betting the farm on the metaverse stuff and it's an odd bet.

I've been using a roommate's Quest 2 for a few days. A few years ago I was using an OG Oculus. The Quest 2 is so much staggeringly better in every way. So much so that I can see a future where people are spending hours in VR games rather than hours playing games on a monitor. Yes, there are issues to work out with the headbands, weight, general FPS and battery life, but I finally _get_ it. The amount of badassery you…

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.

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

#217

Post by aierou »

ohashi wrote: post #58
nappy-doo wrote: post #42

The vitriol on HN for FB is something else. The earnings for this company are truly staggering. They made 11$/user. Their earnings were up 34% year-over-year – on a base of 29B dollars. They made 10B more this year than they did last year, and the comments in here are all about, "boy Apple fucked them, and Meta suxor!" You people are nuts. While I don't love FB as an entity, as a business they are making fucking bank…

We can't be critical of a company that makes people miserable? That weakens democracy? That enables violence and hate? Just because they make a lot of money we should be cheering? Oh wow, they made $11! Let's forget everything else.

What, does public opinion shield you from the burden of proof? These are outrageous claims. I pray for legislation to put this all to rest.

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

#218

Post by evilantnie »

jmknoll wrote: post #150
dymk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using a roommate's Quest 2 for a few days. A few years ago I was using an OG Oculus. The Quest 2 is so much staggeringly better in every way. So much so that I can see a future where people are spending hours in VR games rather than hours playing games on a monitor. Yes, there are issues to work out with the headbands, weight, general FPS and battery life, but I finally _get_ it. The amount of badassery you…

I’m with you on this. I received a Quest as a Christmas gift and basically went from 0 to 100 on VR and the Metaverse. It finally makes sense to me. Like you say, there are some issues with the tech, but they’ll be resolved in time, and it’s clear that this is the future of gaming at least, and maybe much of social media/virtual interaction.

I'd be curious if you feel the same way in a year or so. When I first got into VR I felt very strongly it was the future, but that novelty wore off over the course of a year. I go back every few months to catch up on experiences I've missed and try out new tech, but the novelty has still worn off.

VR is not a daily use experience for me, and I assume for a lot of consumers, but it is still amazing.

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

#219

Post by endisneigh »

kergonath wrote: post #210
that_guy_iain wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Microsoft have had the same business model forever . Microsoft has Xbox, Office, Azure, etc. Google has Android, Google Workplace, GCP, etc. When you diversify your income streams you add more. It doesn't mean you get rid of your breadwinner. Facebook's main model seems to becoming illegal and/or not viable via a tech perspective.

> Google has Android, Google Workplace, GCP, etc. Alphabet is more than 80% advertising: https://searchengineland.com/google-q4-2021-earnings-379735 . They are good at skewing how they are perceived but they are very close to being a one-business company. Not defending Facebook, but Google is not much better.

Their "ads" are driven from more sectors than Facebook. Whatsapp has no ads, so it's basically FB and Insta
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