Author Name: Carribean Channel, Cuba TV.
This story was originally published on canalcaribe.ict.cu. [1]

Zuckerberg and his 31 billion reasons to cry – Canal Caribe

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Date: 2022-02

The saying goes that you should not believe in crocodile tears, but if Mark Zuckerberg, founder and director of Facebook, comes out crying in public these days, I believe him, because it is news in the world of the Internet and social networks that Meta (currently name of the company) plunged almost 27% on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday: the largest single-day drop ever experienced by a company in the United States.

The BBC reports that it is estimated that the social media conglomerate that groups Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram lost around 237 billions in market value. (Even I felt like crying…) The reason for the drop was the decrease for the first time in its 18 years in the number of daily active users to 1.929 million in the last quarter of 2021, compared to 1.930 million of the previous quarter.

“This statistic had always been painted green and that the percentage, although small, is negative has given rise to the belief that the curve has reached its highest point and that from now on it is going to go downhill and without brakes”, expresses the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.

Various specialized media agree that the main reason for the entity’s decline lies in the company’s inability to attract younger users in the face of strong competition from other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, especially the latter, which has become a mass phenomenon, especially among adolescents.

While Meta has struggled to arm wrestle by making its own investments in video to compete with TikTok, its biggest profits still come from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Hence, on the other hand, also Apple’s implementation in iOs 14.5 of the App Tracking Transparency application has represented another leak of money for the company created by Zuckerberg, since it makes it difficult for Facebook to track user data in pursuit of to create consumer profiles and, therefore, design personalized advertising proposals.

David Wehner, CFO of Meta, has assured that this new possibility for iOS users to choose whether or not a third application can track them, will result in a loss of 10 billion dollars in revenue related to advertising during 2022, has accused Apple of having a favorable treatment with Google, which does not seem to be affected by reporting 33% more income compared to the same period of the previous year, reports the specialized site Hipertextual.

And to put the strawberry on the cake, we should take into account the billions invested by the company in the development of the famous metaverse, which is why it changed its name but is still not even close to materializing this project, says James Clayton, American journalist specializing in technology.

Before the question if this could be the beginning of the end for Meta, Clayton predicts to the BBC that the setbacks of these days could only be the beginning. “In recent years its growth in terms of users has stagnated in Europe and the United States, a figure overlapped by the increase in users in other parts of the world. Instead, he’s pumping billions of dollars into trying to create a metaverse, all because Mark Zuckerberg thinks there’s an appetite for it, a big risk.”

Regarding the threat of TikTok, the journalist says that US regulators would never allow this due to the laws to regulate competition.

“(…) many in Silicon Valley now see Facebook as a poisonous brand. It’s certainly not a good place to work in the same way it was ten years ago. That makes attracting talent more difficult. Meta has some serious problems going forward,” says Clayton.

Mark Zuckerberg’s $31 billion one-day loss of wealth is the second-largest ever caused by a stock price slump, second only to the volatile swings in Tesla owner Elon Musk’s fortune, reports the Mexican newspaper El Financiero.

For the first time since 2015, the 37-year-old tycoon is not among the 10 richest people in the world. You can’t believe in crocodile tears, but although Zuckerberg has millions of dollars left over, I have no doubt that even a small sob caused his stock to plummet in a single day.

(C) Cuba TV, Cuban state owned media.
[1] Url: https://www.canalcaribe.icrt.cu/en/zuckerberg-and-his-31-billion-reasons-to-cry/

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