Main Highlights:
- On Wednesday, Meta (Facebook) released fourth-quarter earnings, revealing financial numbers that disappointed Wall Street and sent the company’s shares tumbling. When the numbers were released, the firm’s shares, still trading under the ticker symbol FB, plummeted 20%.
- While the previous quarter’s financial figures verified certain projected tendencies, such as Apple’s iOS privacy controls eroding ad income, they highlighted the uncommon reality that Meta’s primary service, Facebook, is losing users.
- The decline in user growth happened during the quarter. The company, formerly known as Facebook, announced its plan to rebrand as a “metaverse” focused on immersive virtual experiences.
The world’s largest social network is not becoming any more significant. Meta reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, disclosing financial results that disappointed Wall Street enough to send the company’s shares plunging. Shares of the firm, which are still trading under the ticker name FB, fell 20% when the statistics came out.
While the previous quarter of Meta’s financial results confirmed specific predicted patterns, such as Apple’s iOS privacy measures weakening its ad revenue, it also revealed the unusual reality that Facebook, Meta’s critical service, is losing users.
Between the third and fourth quarters of 2021, Facebook’s monthly active users (MAUs) stayed stable at 2.9 billion. Worse, its daily active users (DAUs) decreased from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion during the same period – a first for Facebook, renowned for its growth-at-all-costs strategy.
Some of this is self-evident. Facebook is a mature product (to put it mildly), and the firm can only sign up a certain number of individuals in marketplaces throughout the world. And the firm is placing a greater focus than ever on its “family” of applications, including WhatsApp and Instagram, which are newer products with a long way to go before reaching that level of penetration.
The slowdown in user growth occurred during the same quarter that the corporation formerly known as Facebook revealed its intention to rebrand as a “metaverse” firm, focusing on immersive virtual experiences.
The upshot for Meta is that it retains control of the world’s most extensive social graph. What about the negative news? Even though a user delay was predicted, it’s just another sign that Facebook — and therefore Facebook’s “Family of Apps,” as Meta refers to it — is more of a relic from the past than a gleaming vision of the future.
About Meta (Facebook)
Meta Platforms, Inc., doing business as Meta and formerly known as Facebook, Inc., is a Menlo Park, California-based international technological company. The corporation is the parent company of several companies, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta is one of the most valuable corporations in the world. Along with Google (Alphabet Inc.), Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, it is one of the Big Five American information technology corporations.
Facebook, Messenger, Facebook Watch, and Facebook Portal are examples of meta goods and services. Additionally, it purchased Oculus, Giphy, and Mapillary and owned 9.99 percent of Jio Platforms. The firm earns a sizable portion of its revenue by selling advertisement space to marketers.
In October 2021, media sites claimed that Facebook’s parent firm intended to change its name to “better reflect its focus on metaverse construction.” On October 28, it was relaunched as Meta.
Following a period of intense scrutiny and devastating whistleblower leaks, reports of Facebook’s intention to rebrand and change its name began to circulate on October 21, 2021. On October 25, at the Q3 2021 Earnings Call, Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the continued criticism of the company’s social services and business model. He emphasized the company’s efforts to construct the metaverse without addressing the rebranding and name change.
On October 28, 2021, during Facebook Connect, the metaverse vision and name change from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms were presented. According to Facebook’s public relations effort, the name change represents the company’s long-term strategy of developing the metaverse, a digital extension of the physical world enabled by social networking, virtual reality, and augmented reality capabilities.
