[HN Gopher] Meta's value has plunged by $700B. Wall Street calls...
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       Meta's value has plunged by $700B. Wall Street calls it a "train
       wreck."
        
       Author : heavyset_go
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2022-10-27 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
        
       | MBCook wrote:
       | They spent $9,000,000,000 on the Metaverse in the first 9 months
       | of this year.
       | 
       | That's $1 billion a month.
       | 
       | They are currently peaking at 200k monthly users (who may only
       | spend 5m a month). Honestly that's way higher than I'd have
       | guessed. I wonder what the number would be if you filtered to
       | people who spent over 5 hours or logged on at least twice a week?
       | 
       | Anyway that's $5,000 per user per month. $60,000 per user per
       | year.
       | 
       | You could _easily_ find people who would sit in the Metaverse all
       | day every day for less than that because it would pay more than
       | their job.
       | 
       | What an insane burn rate. On a product even the product's
       | developers don't want to use.
       | 
       | And this is the future of the company?
        
         | smt88 wrote:
         | Horizon Worlds (or whatever it's called) is probably among the
         | biggest failures in the history of business.
         | 
         | Any sane shareholder would oust Zuckerberg at this point, but
         | sadly the only vote that matters is his.
        
           | ThalesX wrote:
           | I have a Quest 2 for a year now and keep trying from time to
           | time to download the app to experience it. It's not available
           | in my region. If that's not pure metaverse irony, I'm not
           | sure what is.
        
         | MrFoof wrote:
         | At $1B a month, that's approximately on par with the GDP of an
         | island nation like Sint Maarten or Grenada.
        
       | Finnucane wrote:
       | The rest of us call it 'a good start'.
        
         | smt88 wrote:
         | Billions of dollars for <200k users is a "good start"?
         | 
         | TikTok, BeReal, Gas, and even Meta's social networks (FB, IG,
         | and WhatsApp) all performed at least an order of magnitude
         | better than that for the amount of money spent.
         | 
         | Imagine any other video game spending that budget and selling
         | less than a million copies. It would be the laughing stock of
         | the industry.
        
           | tpxl wrote:
           | I believe the parent poster may be referring to this being a
           | good start to facebook failing, not a good start for their VR
           | project.
        
             | oliveshell wrote:
             | Yep. For those who haven't heard it, there's an old joke
             | that goes something like:
             | 
             | "What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A
             | good start!"
             | 
             | Yes, it's tasteless, but it gives the context within which
             | I interpreted the parent comment.
        
       | brooklynite429 wrote:
       | They are spending $1 billion dollars a month on the metaverse for
       | what? I really don't see it.
       | 
       | Mark doesn't have the taste to take this plane airborne. VR,
       | moreso than other platforms, will require great design, artistry,
       | music. I haven't seen anything in Meta's VR foray that looks
       | interesting, well designed, nifty or just plain cool. It's a very
       | reductive interpretation of virtual reality . You have a
       | limitless sandbox and the most creative thing you can show
       | is...meeting software? A complete lack of imagination.
       | 
       | Doesn't help that Mark himself keeps talking about the future -
       | the next five, eight, ten years. He himself even admits the
       | experience is not where it should be. Why would anyone buy any of
       | this stuff then?
       | 
       | Can't wait to see what Apple is putting together.
        
         | makeitrain wrote:
         | Maybe it's about finding VR tech to patent before anyone else.
        
         | ThalesX wrote:
         | > VR, moreso than other platforms, will require great design,
         | artistry, music.
         | 
         | VRChat has some amazing experiences. In a way, it's a lot
         | closer to being a Metaverse than Meta.
        
       | SevenNation wrote:
       | This leaves company shares with a price to earnings ratio of 12.
       | Given the size of the company and difficulty such companies have
       | growing, this looks to be about fair value.
       | 
       | An investor with a long time horizon and the ability to see past
       | the obvious social ill this company is committing might find a
       | good entry point soon.
        
       | koyanisqatsi wrote:
       | It's a recession.
        
         | fred_is_fred wrote:
         | Which is a great reason to not blow $15B on a shitty version of
         | 2nd life.
        
         | mpweiher wrote:
         | Well, since 1 year ago, Apple stock is down 2.7% whereas
         | Facebook is down 69%.
         | 
         | I think there may be _some_ FB-specific issues at play...
        
           | tamaharbor wrote:
           | First it was MySpace, and now this.
        
       | pascalxus wrote:
       | I assume this means that employee compensation is nearly half
       | what was before, since almost half of the comp is just stock,
       | right?
       | 
       | With the astronomical COL over there, those employees in palo
       | alto are probably gonna be hurting really bad next year and
       | beyond.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | bezoz wrote:
       | (Disclaimer: i am an ex meta employee)
       | 
       | This is unfortunate because genuinely i like where they are going
       | with VR and they have pushed the technology forward considerably.
       | Their metaverse vision makes no sense to me though but hopefully
       | they course correct
       | 
       | I do hope meta recovers from this. The real risk is going to be
       | mark's mental health and his ability to stay focused amongst this
       | insanity. We shall see
        
         | cuteboy19 wrote:
         | The investor meeting did not inspire confidence. He seems to be
         | all in and has no plans of course correction
        
         | pinewurst wrote:
         | That's a risk I'm prepared to take. :)
        
         | cityzen wrote:
        
           | drlobster wrote:
           | Don't be a big meanie
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-27 23:02 UTC)