[HN Gopher] Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results
        
       Author : simonpure
       Score  : 64 points
       Date   : 2022-07-27 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (investor.fb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (investor.fb.com)
        
       | MarcellusDrum wrote:
       | Do you think we have already seen peak Facebook? Obviously we
       | can't judge from one bad(?) quarter, but from Meta's desperate
       | attempts to copy Tiktok, I think its a slow decline from here.
        
         | vineyardmike wrote:
         | Their attempt to copy TikTok is a sign they're still competing
         | - they copied snap _and won_ , so it'd be more concerning if
         | they didn't do it again.
        
         | paulpauper wrote:
         | They have Instagram and what's app , too, let's not forget.
         | 
         | So it is diversified in that sense.
        
           | steve_adams_86 wrote:
           | It's popular to hate on Meta/Facebook but those acquisitions
           | were very prescient and evidently pure dumb luck, either. The
           | same Zuckerberg is still a directional force now as he was
           | then, so it seems it isn't cut and dry that the company will
           | only trend down from here.
           | 
           | The bet on VR seems dubious to me, but I'm getting old and
           | boring. I don't know what anyone likes.
        
       | sys_64738 wrote:
       | Look how many people FB has to support their webpage. Insane.
        
         | Yhippa wrote:
         | It must be mostly backend stuff. It feels like the website
         | itself barely evolved over the past several years.
        
       | almog wrote:
       | Yes, Facebook has weathered past storms by adapting to changes,
       | but anyone using Google+ failure to draw parallels with TikTok,
       | is making a superficial comparison at best.
       | 
       | For one, Google+ never matured in terms of user engagement or DAU
       | that interacted with its social feed. It's not Facebook's "war
       | story" but a story of Google's own failure.
        
       | alangibson wrote:
       | On the metaverse question: does anyone seriously believe Facebook
       | can innovate, let alone build a new industry?
        
         | mwint wrote:
         | I kind of think FB is uniquely positioned to make the metaverse
         | thing work, if it possibly can. I just think it's unlikely
         | we'll ever see it catch on, no matter who is pushing it.
        
           | spaceman_2020 wrote:
           | Imagine Facebook comment sections...but in VR.
           | 
           | Yikes!
        
           | kornhole wrote:
           | They have the capital and people. I keep asking people I know
           | if anybody is excited about their metaverse, and only a
           | marketing person told me she was. Their reputation from past
           | behavior is going to make it difficult for people to adopt. I
           | see a big flop, but I have been wrong before.
        
           | alangibson wrote:
           | In terms of market position, you're right. But in terms of
           | creativity and innovation, they've got the algorithmic news
           | feed and little else.
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | They have the cash to make the hardware, the capital-intensive
         | side, work. On the actual product experience I'm unconvinced.
         | But all Meta needs to do is be competitive in the space not win
         | it. If they're in the top-3, that's still a huge revenue
         | generator.
        
           | alangibson wrote:
           | They changed their name to Meta... They need to win it or
           | become a footnote. The market won't accept them going from a
           | world leader to an also-ran.
        
             | ALittleLight wrote:
             | Their share price would just update to reflect their
             | position. The market isn't going to punish a company for
             | declining, just price a company based on current position
             | and future prospects. It is the nature of companies to
             | grow, stagnate, decline, and fail.
        
             | Karrot_Kream wrote:
             | Right now Meta has product offerings (Horizon Worlds), they
             | have an app store, and they make their own hardware. I find
             | their product offering to be bad, but their app store and
             | hardware are fine. Valve has made plenty of money over the
             | years by owning just an app store alone. I think Meta is
             | still a world leader owning the store and the hardware even
             | if their product offering is middling. Being able to
             | innovate on the hardware end gives them great leverage on
             | what features applications use, the ability to influence
             | AAA studios and indie devs alike. This will eventually stop
             | if VR hardware becomes commoditized, but that's not
             | happening any time soon if it ever does. And if Meta does
             | win the product battle then there's even more value to
             | profit from.
             | 
             | And not being a world leader won't tank their stock or
             | somehow erase the company. There's still real
             | earnings/value to be had in VR and they're early in the
             | space. As long as the space as a whole is successful and
             | Meta stays a part of it, they'll continue to receive
             | revenue which will continue to drive stock growth. They
             | might not forever stay a behemoth, but they're not going
             | anywhere any time soon.
        
       | t_mann wrote:
       | Imho Facebook has entered Nokia territory. Their core products
       | are losing market share, their innovative products (Oculus) are
       | lacking a killer app.
        
         | sparkbII wrote:
        
         | threeseed wrote:
         | iPhone has been losing market share and never had a killer app.
         | 
         | And given the Quest2 has a been a commercial success perhaps
         | like the iPhone there is no one game changing single app but a
         | range of apps and features.
        
       | mgl wrote:
       | This is likely the peak for facebook, the website.
       | 
       | But it may not be a peak for facebook, the company - it is time
       | for a new product.
       | 
       | Facebook successfully digested any vital competition in the
       | social media market, the big question is whether they (still)
       | have the innovation gene in their DNA.
       | 
       | Alternatively, they could keep acquiring any new emerging social
       | apps like BeReal, especially targeting the youngest people, so
       | the platform can keep the attractive demographics forever.
        
         | civilized wrote:
         | When did they last do innovation? As far as I can tell the site
         | is hardly different from when the Wall / News Feed was invented
         | in... what, 2005? Since then they've made a few minor
         | extensions of the site, a few major acquisitions of
         | competitors, and that's it.
        
       | doubtfuluser wrote:
       | I don't think this is yet the beginning of the end - the company
       | has proven to be resilient in the past (Google+, mobile). But
       | yeah declining MAU from last quarter and overall numbers not too
       | great. Now war-time Zuck will come.
        
       | kgraves wrote:
       | Great to see the beginning of the end of Meta / Facebook with
       | their first revenue miss.
       | 
       | Hopefully their metaverse play is a costly fatal distraction that
       | will ultimately lead them to lose more money while lots of people
       | run away from using their platform.
       | 
       | The fact they are ruining their own product [0] to compete with
       | TikTok shows that they have completely run out of ideas.
       | 
       | There is no saving Facebook / Meta this time.
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/27/instagr...
        
         | throwaway1777 wrote:
         | They're still printing money. It's hardly the end. People said
         | this about Microsoft for years when they missed mobile, and
         | look at them now.
        
           | mandeepj wrote:
           | > look at them now
           | 
           | "A new CEO" - gave them that much needed new life lease
        
         | alliao wrote:
         | wow is that right, that's gotta be pretty significant. first
         | revenue miss.. gotta happen some time
        
       | rightbyte wrote:
       | "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?
        
         | antoniuschan99 wrote:
         | Thinking they had an aggressive hiring for metaverse
        
         | snoopy_telex wrote:
         | I have no idea what all those people are actually doing. That
         | seems so heavy a head count for the public end result.
         | 
         | Is there a break down somewhere of how many are SWE vs SRE vs
         | support?
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | Yeah, that casts a very different light over the suggested
         | layoffs.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | Off topic: I wonder why this is posted from fb.com as opposed to
       | meta.com.
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | Bad..as expected. Meta generates tons of cash though, i think
       | it's cheap, imho
        
         | alexk307 wrote:
         | They operate on 30% margins, even a bad quarter or two is worth
         | looking at
        
       | fleddr wrote:
       | As usual, people making a fool out of themselves by confusing
       | "Facebook is no longer cool" with actual value.
       | 
       | Half the adults on this planet use a Meta product DAILY, and they
       | added some 3% to it in an incredibly difficult environment.
       | 
       | The only interesting thing in the results are the lower ad
       | prices.
        
       | decebalus1 wrote:
       | https://www.theverge.com/23277797/mark-zuckerberg-meta-faceb...
       | 
       | 'Crack' is the sound that is commonly associated with 'a whip'.
        
       | pclmulqdq wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | spaceman_2020 wrote:
         | They've deeply embedded themselves into my life because of
         | Whatsapp.
         | 
         | Life and work are nearly impossible here without Whatsapp.
        
           | biorach wrote:
           | Yeah but how much advertising revenue does WhatsApp bring in?
        
           | pclmulqdq wrote:
           | Whatsapp is really deeply embedded in business in Latin
           | America and it's deeply concerning to me. It was already
           | reading your conversations. At best, it's going to start
           | serving ads soon.
        
           | Karrot_Kream wrote:
           | So have the telecom companies. We don't need to downlevel the
           | quality of the site because of it.
        
           | brianhorakh wrote:
           | Talk to your friends and family about matrix.org, setup a
           | whatsapp bridge for the laggards.
        
         | threeseed wrote:
         | > Au revoir, Facebook.
         | 
         | Modern day Linux on the Desktop.
        
           | christophilus wrote:
           | Desktop Linux and non-Facebook user, here. Can confirm.
        
           | pclmulqdq wrote:
           | Last week, I switched my desktop to Linux. I was pretty
           | bullish on FB (but hated the company) until the whole
           | "Metaverse" thing.
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Comparing to 2021 can be misleading because the Covid year was
         | a strange anomaly for digital businesses. That kind of profits
         | may be a long way off for most of them.
         | 
         | Meta's operating income (i.e. profit before taxes and interest
         | basically) for this past quarter was $8.3 billion. That's
         | roughly the same as Exxon did in its Q1. "Au revoir" seems
         | premature when they're still raking in that much cash.
        
           | impulser_ wrote:
           | Also, they run three of the top five most used applications
           | in the world.
           | 
           | I love how people keep saying Facebook is dying, yet TikTok
           | still doesn't have as many active users as Facebook, WhatsApp
           | and Instagram.
           | 
           | The only application that does is YouTube.
        
         | baal80spam wrote:
         | Hopefully 'farewell'.
        
         | redmen wrote:
         | Au revoir?
         | 
         | Don't think dethroning the lizard king is going to be that
         | easy.
        
           | daenz wrote:
           | Facebook will die, Meta will live through Instagram and
           | whatever else it can purchase.
        
           | solarmist wrote:
           | Snarky only comments aren't in the spirit of HN...
           | 
           | That said I laughed out loud to this. I'm not a FB fan
           | because of all the dark patterns.
           | 
           | Edit: Added "only"
        
             | spaceman_2020 wrote:
             | Its okay, Zuckerberg isn't reading these comments.
             | 
             | We should at least be able to make snarky comments about
             | our overlords on anonymous internet forums.
        
               | threeseed wrote:
               | I do love the idea of computer nerds making fun of the
               | appearance of other nerds.
        
               | solarmist wrote:
               | It's not the snarkiness. It can be snarky if it also adds
               | to the conversation. There wasn't really anything people
               | could say in repose to your comment that was relevant to
               | the topic.
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | 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 quickly souring on the entire social media industry.
         | There's no reason it had to stay around
        
         | flyinglizard wrote:
         | They are still a very powerful part of interpersonal
         | communication - friends and family.
         | 
         | The only way forward is for them to kick out Mark, stop the
         | insanity that is Metaverse, focus on their core and play nice
         | with the platforms and regulators.
        
           | __derek__ wrote:
           | > The only way forward is for them to kick out Mark
           | 
           | It might be hard to convince him to give himself the boot,
           | especially while the company continues to make gobs of money.
           | Maybe we'll see a compromise where the company starts paying
           | a dividend and Zuck shovels the rest of the cash into his
           | passion project.
        
           | colinmhayes wrote:
           | Mark is unkickable, he has owns the majority of votes. We're
           | not even close to a world where he kicks himself
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | He may end up kicking himself in a different way. ;)
             | 
             | In any case, it will be interesting to see how the
             | Metaverse thing will eventually perish.
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | My guess is that he will resign in shame if the "Metaverse"
             | project doesn't pan out for them, and get replaced by an
             | MBA.
        
               | colinmhayes wrote:
               | Sure, but he gave himself until 2030 to prove the
               | metaverse.
        
               | oneoff786 wrote:
               | That's a laughably short duration to produce mass appeal
               | VR
        
               | yuppie_scum wrote:
               | It should be pretty obvious at this point that the man
               | has no shame.
        
           | pclmulqdq wrote:
           | 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 recession is the time for a mega-cap company to
           | start spending a lot on a new uncertain project.
        
             | giantrobot wrote:
             | > 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 operations expertise that
             | Apple currently has.
             | 
             | You're basically saying "If Facebook could build a copy of
             | Apple from scratch and make some compelling products, they
             | could be the next Apple". Samsung is an industrial behemoth
             | and _just_ keeps up with Apple.
             | 
             | Not only is that unlikely it doesn't even sound possible.
        
               | pclmulqdq wrote:
               | It seems like they need about 5-10 big fundamental
               | improvements in technology to make the headsets work well
               | enough for consumers. In the next 5-10 years, it's very
               | possible that this bet will pay off.
        
               | threeseed wrote:
               | Might want to watch this as it's quite clear Meta knows
               | exactly what's required to make the Metaverse a reality.
               | 
               | And if they achieve it then it will be a game changer as
               | big as the internet or smart phone.
               | 
               | https://youtu.be/2zHDkdkqd1I
        
               | deltree7 wrote:
               | Bingo! I'm always astonished by the amount of
               | cluelessness displayed by HN crowd -- supposedly at the
               | cutting edge of things. Like all other platforms, about
               | 5% of the posters at HN provide extremely valuable
               | content. The rest just parrot current popular pitchfork
               | (anti-capitalism, anti-corporate, anti-advertisments --
               | stuff that I can get from TikTok in a more entertaining
               | format).
        
         | phailhaus wrote:
         | Higher expenses were already expected due to the metaverse
         | play, so I don't think this means that Facebook is really going
         | anywhere.
        
         | gigatexal wrote:
         | Yeah as much as I hope they go the way of the dodo I think
         | they're far too big to die soon. MySpace wasn't anywhere close
         | to their size when it died. That being said it doesn't mean we
         | can't hope and pray for such things. ;-)
        
           | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
           | Well, the trend is that the successor is worse.
           | 
           | Looks at TikTok...
        
         | civilized wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | hamandcheese wrote:
       | Facebook pays a lower effective tax rate than most HN commenters.
        
         | googlryas wrote:
         | Is there a reason corporations even pay taxes, versus just
         | taxing individuals once they get money distributed to them from
         | the corporation?
        
           | Closi wrote:
           | > Is there a reason corporations even pay taxes, versus just
           | taxing individuals once they get money distributed to them
           | from the corporation?
           | 
           | Yes - because without corporation tax the revenues might get
           | funneled out of the country and taxed elsewhere in tax
           | avoidance schemes (both at the 'corporate' level in foreign-
           | owned businesses, and at the individual level with the
           | ability for the rich to setup shell corps to avoid income
           | tax).
        
           | throwaway5959 wrote:
           | If that happens I'll form a corporation, rent forever and
           | have my employer pay my corporation and move to a state
           | without income tax.
        
             | vineyardmike wrote:
             | Should move to Puerto Rico and avoid federal tax.
        
         | Closi wrote:
         | Well that's probably mostly because the corporate tax rate in
         | the united states is lower than many HN commenters taxes,
         | rather than specific Meta policies.
         | 
         | (USA corporate tax rate is 21%, while someone earning $200k in
         | California would pay an effective rate of 33% including
         | Federal, FICA & State taxes).
         | 
         | Besides - the effective paid 17% compares favourably with their
         | competitors and others in the space.
        
       | clintonwoo wrote:
       | I'm guessing they publish their tax rate on the first page to
       | counter criticisms of "big corps that pay no taxes".
       | 
       | It's hard to deny that a company cannot grow forever with the
       | same product. There's literally only so many people on Earth.
       | It's not a bad thing for growth to stop. It's a bad thing for
       | your product to offer a sub par user experience though. I think
       | this is where Facebook has suffered as they prioritized metrics
       | and numbers over making a product that people love.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | spaceman_2020 wrote:
       | Guidance is atrocious.
       | 
       | While the misses might not look bad in isolation, the overall
       | picture isn't looking good. The COO just quit after an extremely
       | successful run, guidance is bad, and worst of all, the planned
       | rebranding to Metaverse has been hijacked by crypto bros shilling
       | ponzis on steroids.
        
         | vineyardmike wrote:
         | The overall picture looks promising... except the gov just
         | blocked one of their latest acquisitions, which may mean the
         | end of that.
         | 
         | They're best positioned to combat the ATT changes. No one can
         | handle the engineering costs of navigating that and the data
         | limitations as well as them. Their direct response advertising
         | base has no where else to go, snap just proved that.
         | 
         | The meta verse re-brand is meant to be forward looking
         | (although IMO not close enough for their needs). They can't
         | grow social media forever - especially as social views of it
         | sour.
        
       | oneoff786 wrote:
       | Results are bad
        
       | cm2012 wrote:
       | 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
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | Like I said before, the premature death of Meta Platforms
       | constantly screamed here and even orchestrated and parroted by
       | the mainstream media, has been _greatly_ exaggerated.
       | 
       | Still profitable in a market downturn even with rising inflation
       | fears causing everyone else in big tech to slightly miss
       | expectations. DAUs, MAUs up again and they will be here for
       | another 10+ years like it or not.
       | 
       | It's business as usual folks.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | The price of the stock is not based on "business as usual." It
         | is based on relentless growth.
        
           | rvcdbn wrote:
           | with a PE of 13?
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | Oh, it's that low? I guess they are priced for "slow
             | decline." For comparison, IBM's P/E ratio was around 10
             | before the pivot to a consulting company.
        
         | stefan_ wrote:
         | That's nice, but what does the future hold? Companies aren't
         | valued on the here and now.
         | 
         | This is after all the company that is betting its future on
         | clown shows like this:
         | https://twitter.com/MetaQuestVR/status/1551943338038726657
         | 
         | It's hard to decide what is the more inept management between
         | the Twitter crypto avatar bros and the meta "meta" verse
         | people.
        
         | UncleMeat wrote:
         | This one will be interesting. On the one hand, still hugely
         | profitable. An operating margin of 29% is insane. On the other
         | hand, people expect growth and no revenue growth and a large
         | drop in income is definitely not what investors want to see.
        
           | samspenc wrote:
           | The interesting thing is they were operating at more than 40%
           | profit margins for years now. A drop to 29% margins [1] is
           | actually pretty significant and puts it in line with profit
           | margins at most other larger tech firms, and not at the top
           | of the market anymore.
           | 
           | [1] Looks like this is pre-tax? I'm calculating 25% post-tax
           | margins.
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | Given how the market is reacting, or non-reacting, then yeah
         | this is business as usual for Meta. But hating on Meta is just
         | free karma on HN so why not? You don't come to these threads to
         | deal with the truth, you just voice your feelings or farm
         | karma.
        
       | cletus wrote:
       | 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 steps are VR
       | then AR. In this context, the Oculus acquisition makes more
       | sense.
       | 
       | Meta is ultimately (IMHO) suffering from a problem similar to
       | what Microsoft had in 2000: it didn't know where to go and lacked
       | leadership and direction. With MS and Netscape, MS really
       | believed they were doing normal MS things until the governmen
       | tintervened and they didn't really know what to do.
       | 
       | There have been three big initiatives from the top at FB that
       | IMHO didn't and still don't make sense:
       | 
       | 1. In respons eto the misinformation aroundd and subsequent to
       | the 2016 election, FB decided to try and police truth with "fact
       | checking". This is a huge mistake. Nobody is going to be happy.
       | There will always be a line where people disagree. Even in clear
       | cases of false information, as we've seen you're going to still
       | upset a lot of people. This was always a losing strategy;
       | 
       | 2. They decided to merge WhatsApp, FB Messenger and IG Direct to
       | try and "win" the US messaging market against iMessage. Years
       | before this there was no concerted effort to merge FB, IG and WA
       | accounts. When asked, Mark said they were differnt ecosystems
       | with different permissions. It didn't make sense to try and unify
       | them. Well that fell by the wayside and angered users in the
       | process; and
       | 
       | 3. The Metaverse. Much like VR in general, I don't htink is ever
       | going to be mainstream. It doesn't solve any problem. AR might if
       | we can ever get AR glasses to work but that's a pretty big if.
       | For now, people love their phones. They don't love VR headsets
       | and (again, IMHO) they never will.
       | 
       | So now Meta stock has lost half its value. The best performers
       | will be looking at the door. An effort to weed out low performers
       | is going to make things incredibly toxic. It won't weed out
       | bottom performers. It'll weed out those who are the worst at
       | politics because that's what employee calibration is.
       | 
       | None of this is address the real problem: leadership. There is no
       | top-level direction (that makes sense). Who you should be looking
       | to lose is 50% of the people from directors right up to Mark's
       | level. ICs and "leaf" managers don't decide company strategy.
       | Direct this at those who do.
        
         | chrisco255 wrote:
         | Re: #2, they also decided to merge Facebook with Oculus login,
         | and I still refuse to buy an Oculus for that reason alone. I'm
         | tired of my data being cross analyzed and seeing creepy ads
         | follow me around the internet. Last thing I want to do is plug
         | into some Facebook metaverse where even my eyeball movements
         | are analyzed and processed.
         | 
         | As a kid I thought I would love VR. And even as solid as the
         | modern experiences have gotten, spending more than 15 minutes
         | in a headset is nauseating, and there's so much ceremony to get
         | set up and you pretty much are expected to stand while playing.
         | I'd rather veg out on the couch with a PS4 controller, I guess?
        
           | Karrot_Kream wrote:
           | > As a kid I thought I would love VR. And even as solid as
           | the modern experiences have gotten, spending more than 15
           | minutes in a headset is nauseating, and there's so much
           | ceremony to get set up and you pretty much are expected to
           | stand while playing. I'd rather veg out on the couch with a
           | PS4 controller, I guess?
           | 
           | Yeah VR tech needs to become much more seamless before it
           | impacts the market. But we can see that as headsets get
           | better, a larger market segment is willing to take part.
           | Every upgrade in experience and ergonomics opens up another
           | tier of user.
        
           | dnissley wrote:
           | re: The merging of facebook with oculus login -- next month
           | you'll be able to create a standalone "meta" account, which
           | are basically the equivalent of the old oculus accounts. You
           | don't have to link them with a facebook account or any other
           | existing account (but you will have the option).
           | 
           | https://store.facebook.com/help/accounts/?intern_source=blog.
           | ..
           | 
           | Disclaimer: I work on a team that's helping out with this
           | effort
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | > So now Meta stock has lost half its value. The best
         | performers will be looking at the door. An effort to weed out
         | low performers is going to make things incredibly toxic. It
         | won't weed out bottom performers. It'll weed out those who are
         | the worst at politics because that's what employee calibration
         | is.
         | 
         | Just FYI this is not a uniquely Meta problem or even a Big Tech
         | problem. This is going to hit almost every tech company. Stocks
         | are down across the board, and Meta stock losing half its value
         | is just business as usual in this economy. Best performers will
         | look at the door to... end up at another company shedding its
         | stock value for the same. Layoffs and cuts always create lots
         | of FUD and while they're generally based around performance,
         | politics is omnipresent and will always result in unjustified
         | winners and unneeded losers.
        
           | DeRock wrote:
           | On a 5 year period:
           | 
           | -MSFT: up 267%
           | 
           | -GOOG: up 143%
           | 
           | -AMZN: up 131%
           | 
           | -AAPL: up 316%
           | 
           | and META? down 6%
        
       | yuppie_scum wrote:
       | You hate to see it
        
       | mannymanman wrote:
       | Ties are back on the menu https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-
       | mark-zuckerberg-wore-tie-...
        
       | newfonewhodis wrote:
       | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/27/facebook-parent-meta-earning...
       | 
       | - Earnings: $2.46 per share vs. $2.59 per share expected,
       | according to Refinitiv
       | 
       | - Revenue: $28.82 billion vs. $28.94 billion expected, according
       | to Refinitiv
       | 
       | - Daily Active Users (DAUs): 1.97 billion vs 1.96 billion
       | expected, according to StreetAccount
       | 
       | - Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.93 vs 2.94 billion expected,
       | according to StreetAccount
       | 
       | - Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $9.82 vs. $9.83 expected,
       | according to StreetAccount
        
         | jstummbillig wrote:
         | Okay at the danger of outing myself as financially incompetent
         | at big company level, the difference seems neglible?
        
           | spaceman_2020 wrote:
           | The market tracks the future, not the present.
           | Underperforming, even marginally, against expectations
           | implies that the trend for the next quarter is going to be
           | down as well.
        
           | alliao wrote:
           | the game is you're supposed to beat analysts figures at the
           | very least. easier when you have headroom or extra trick up
           | your sleeves. I vaguely remember there was a time when
           | facebook was so hot they were able to cook up a nice round
           | figure for revenue or something prior or for IPO. pure
           | flexing.
        
             | pid-1 wrote:
             | Why?
             | 
             | Facebook isn't a Hedge Fund. They want to beat their
             | competitors, not market research predictions.
        
               | mhh__ wrote:
               | Hedge funds also aim to beat their competitors
        
               | uoaei wrote:
               | > They want to beat their competitors
               | 
               | Not quite. They want to satisfy shareholders. Beating
               | competitors is second-order because the shareholders will
               | be happy (read: get more money) when that happens.
        
               | threeseed wrote:
               | Zuckerberg doesn't need to care about shareholders when
               | he can't be removed.
        
           | pclmulqdq wrote:
           | The part that's missing here is the expenses, which have
           | risen substantially.
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | The market largely agrees with you. With the stock remaining
           | flat over the last month (including today).
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | Apparently the market was basically expecting this, and
             | Facebook now is priced like IBM in the early 2000's.
        
           | maronato wrote:
           | There's a difference between the market expecting a great
           | quarter and FB missing by a little, and the market expecting
           | a bad quarter and FB doing even worse.
        
       | tmaly wrote:
       | The note on Reality Labs is pretty big in my opinion given the
       | rebranding as Meta.
        
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