[HN Gopher] Facebook shares plunge on weaker-than-expected earnings
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook shares plunge on weaker-than-expected earnings
Author : whitepaint
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-02-02 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| donsupreme wrote:
| FB went all in on Metaverse reminded me of Google between
| 2007-2012 when they mobilized the whole company and invested
| heavily around social with OpenSocial, Google Circle etc. Google
| eventually realized that's not their core strength and moved on,
| let's see what will FB do.
| rektide wrote:
| To glom Buzz/Salmon/OpenSocial (the great intertwingularizing
| era, circa 2008) & Google Circle together is to marry night &
| day. These are opposite ends, opposite realms. Buzz, Salmon
| Protocol, OpenSocial: these were hopeful, strong, API oriented,
| pro-value-creation protocol-based interoperable ways of
| connecting the world, making new system creation possible.
| Engineers doing internet engineering things, trying to build an
| ecosystem for interconnection.
|
| Google didn't realize building healthy, interoperable, internet
| technology wasn't their core strength & drop it. The story is
| much sadder. Their new head guy showed up & personally demanded
| things go his way & that everyone build his pet project, Google
| Plus. A vanity Facebook competitor with a real name policy,
| with no extropic/network benefits, no connection to the rest of
| the net (although you could send some data in to it: literally
| it's only api, one method): just another shitty little social
| app.
|
| Google eventually realized this product was trash & insisting
| every team creatively find ways to interoperate with it was a
| mess, and canned this shitty little social app. (One I used &
| enjoyed, but which was of scant real enduring value, was deeply
| disconnected.)
|
| There's two eras here. They look like opposite ends, to me.
|
| As for Meta. Well. There is a lot of the vanity project bent,
| judging the book by it's cover. But I also think it's good to
| increase the engineering challenges, to go big. To find new
| hard problems. Google Plus was just a cheap knock off, a
| facsimile, with some narrow twists (Circles). Facebook is at
| least trying something. I have sincere doubts about headsets,
| but the idea of virtual place, & of re-materializing the
| virtual makes a lot of sense to orient & re-ground (what a pun)
| computing - could do a lot. But Meta could walk either of the
| two Google paths I just described: they could walk the open,
| interoperable, ecosystem path & kickstart a new era in
| computing with a buoyant healthy technical ecosystem, or they
| could walk the Google Plus era path & create a closed,
| proprietary product or series of products that try to succeed
| so strongly on their own that they inflate a new market
| singlehandedly.
| silisili wrote:
| I think (and hope) you're right, but Google was just moving in
| a general direction. With the announcement and even -name
| change-, it feels way more invested than Google ever was. Would
| be really weird to undo all that.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Google is called alphabet now ... so they clearly wanted to
| pursue other things.
| [deleted]
| lvl100 wrote:
| Problem with Facebook is that they can't acquire anyone due to
| their notoriety. They should have been able to use all the cash
| generated in the past five years to purchase a bunch of assets
| like Microsoft. At the end of the day, they have a bad branding
| problem. Need a fresh start with new management which we know is
| never going to happen.
| donsupreme wrote:
| They did use all that money to overpay market value for a lot
| of engineers, data scientist, etc. They were particularly
| aggressive the past 2 years during the pandemic, but a lot of
| those hires are now getting paid 20% less on their overall
| comp.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Not a fresh start necessarily. What they need is (a) changing
| how they're run and what their goals are (which apparently
| hasn't happened) and (b) sending honest signals [1] thay they
| have done so.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory
| lvl100 wrote:
| I will make it simple: they need to buy Stripe/Shopify. They
| really need to own e-commerce vertical.
| donsupreme wrote:
| Should've done that in the past 2 years, now that Lina Khan
| is the head of FTC no way it will be approved.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| The actual earnings report from the company itself:
|
| https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4...
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Notice how much they are being hurt by apples ios policies.
| (Growth in revenue drops from 37 to 20 - corresponding to some
| 20 b pr year)
|
| Tells you why Google is paying Apple and how much Apple
| potentially could extract.
| nemothekid wrote:
| What's more surprising to me is DAU's dropping. Has Facebook
| penetrated every person on the planet, or is the Facebook
| empire starting to shrink?
| analogdreams wrote:
| Maybe if they spent less time censoring/de-platforming they would
| have eyeballs to sell those ads to.
| llampx wrote:
| Down 25% or so, currently. Would you buy at this point? Why or
| why not?
| ejb999 wrote:
| wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole - and for the same
| reason I won't own tobacco stocks.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Surely there will be a rebound after a drop like this; they are
| still growing and making money.
| mikestew wrote:
| "Dead cat bounce": risky, but it can often work. You just
| have to stick to the plan and not hold it. Let it bounce,
| sell. Called such because if you drop it from a sufficient
| height, even a dead cat will bounce once. Would I buy? If it
| weren't the tech equivalent of Exxon-Mobil I would probably
| take a small position for the lulz, put a tight stop on it,
| and see what happens in the next day or two.
| crocwrestler wrote:
| Hey, at least XOM is up 26.88% YTD
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-02 23:02 UTC)