patrick.net

Hircus says

I recall hearing early this yr they said their metaverse is years away.

Nobody seems to like the early prototypes very much. Employees are rumored to not be using it much.

More importantly, I don't know what this is going to solve. I doubt this will help in communication like a bulletin-board, email, or regular Facebook. It's best hope perhaps is that it improves pornography, but I'm skeptical here too.

Hircus says

My guess for cost cutting now is because tiktok is kicking their ass

Tik Tok is owned by the Chicoms. Its not a publicly listed company so its hard to tell how much ad revenue Tik Tok is getting.

But from what I have learned from Tik Tok users, they don't take it seriously as an app, whereas its an app to make funny videos. They said it cannot do what Facebook or Instagram can do.

For Facebook, my HOA uses it to communicate with owners. Also a lot of small businesses use it as well as I've seen local companies from roofers to tutoring services that use it as an alternative or supplement to a website.

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Yet futures are up, defying poor earnings from 3 of the biggest tech cos.

I hope FB goes the way of myspace. I hate the way they control speech on FB.

I bailed on FB a while ago. it was a nice way to keep in touch with my large extended family, as well as friends. But that got old after a while, especially the posts by insane liberal family members regarding hero Kyle, Trump, and all of the hypocritical requisite virtue signaling that was constantly going on. But what finally made me pull the plug was an unwarranted edit of a factual post about Biden's remarkable overnight comeback. Just the graphs prompted commentary, and a FB message to a friend that again contained factual data backed up by reference articles was not allowed to be sent as it went against some nonsense policies. It was just sent to one person through their messaging app. No one else would read it, except for the FB Karens, I guess. That was it. Buh bye.

Facebook down 20% in after hours

ERECTION INTENSEFYING!!!

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-stock-is-getting-pounded-mostly-because-of-one-number-112231149.html

Why is Meta stock tanking? 'The wrong number at the wrong time,' analyst explains

TBH, a p/e that low makes it look like a buy. But do I want to buy into evil?

Employees: Get boosted or get packing.

Patrick says

TBH, a p/e that low makes it look like a buy. But do I want to buy into evil?

Well, you aren't getting great shareholder rights and the metaverse seems like a moneyhole.

Al_Sharpton_for_President says

Employees: Get boosted or get packing.

Good point, they did require that poison even after Zukerberg first warned about it. Never going to buy Facebook stock.

The Incorporation of Evil was also whacked recently.

Patrick says

TBH, a p/e that low makes it look like a buy. But do I want to buy into evi

A low P/E could mean a value trap. However, revenue or sales have gone up so that means Meta still has a customer base that is buying into their ad business model.

From what I can see of the financials, Meta revenue is still increasing each year. So it is still a growing company.

Also, Facebook has Instagram and WhatsApp. It can make money off them, and its Facebook Reels is starting to gain popularity.

I see Reels posts in my newsfeed that has at least 1 million views.

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Maybe it's a bargain now?
It's gotta be worth a few times more than Twitter is.

CEO Mark Zuck is burning through cash. I hope his investments are paying off. Maybe 2023 is the last year of major cash expenditures. My guess is Meta will stop major expenditures when its equity (asset minus liabilities/debt) is at 2016 levels.

But I can see how VR and AR are used for not just entertainment like game and movies, but also education and training. I can see them used such as to take a virtual tour of a science museum or to virtually conduct a science lab.
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ad says

I hope his investments are paying off.

??

clambo says

It's gotta be worth a few times more than Twitter is.

Did you see the graphic I posted? That little green box is Twitter's market cap.
META is the much larger red box just to the left.

https://slaynews.com/economy/meta-fined-24-7-million-for-violating-washington-states-campaign-finance-transparency-law/

It's a small fine for Facebook's criminal activity, but maybe someone knows that larger fines are on the horizon because of Zuckerberg's funding of the ballot-stuffing mules in the 2020 election.

just_passing_through says

ad says

I hope his investments are paying off.

??

I am speaking of all the research and development investments that Meta or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is making such as VR headsets and Facebook Reels.

I do notice Reels has become more popular as more people are using it.

.

I watched his introduction of the new avatars (well, the first 40-something seconds of it) and found it incredibly silly. (They have asses and legs now, yay!) I can understand the allure of the augmented reality, like you put on the goggles, look at the car's engine and it highlights the fasteners you need to undo and parts take off in order to perform some repair... this kind of thing. But the whole idea of holding "meetings" of "avatars" in some "virtual rooms"... We held shitloads of zoom meetings at work since that coof BS started and nobody even bothered to turn on the fucking camera - voice and ability to share screen is plenty enough to be effective. Avatars add nothing. They are pointless.

Hugh_Mongous says

But the whole idea of holding "meetings" of "avatars" in some "virtual rooms"..

I agree. I wonder if Meta will try to make it more for entertainment such as Disney mixes education with entertainment at Disney Epcot.

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zzyzzx says

Why is Meta stock tanking? 'The wrong number at the wrong time,' analyst explains

Here is where I think the Meta investments such as into Reels will help to compensate for all the spending. Read below, and I have seen Reels videos personally in my Facebook newsfeed. Reels has taken off and seems very popular. And I think more and more people will want to use it instead of relying on the Chicom-owned Tik Tok. Remember when many doubted Meta being able to pull off Reels and for it to gain any popularity ?

" In terms of competition, Meta’s fierce head-to-head with TikTok has overshadowed its effort with short video form content. Nevertheless, Meta users are consuming 140 billion Reels a day, a 50% increase from six months ago, and they generated $3 billion in annual ad revenue. Zuckerberg told analysts it is attempting to close the gap to monetize reels at the same rate as the Instagram Feed or Stories. "

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/analysts-slash-their-ratings-on-meta-as-costs-balloon-the-bad-news-is-you-suck-the-good-news-is-you-can-only-get-better-11666866655

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ad says

Meta users are consuming 140 billion Reels a day

This seems implausible to me. 20 for every human on earth? Say only 1/10 of the world is really on Facebook each day. Do those users average 200 Reels per day?

Patrick says

This seems implausible to me. 20 for every human on earth? Say only 1/10 of the world is really on Facebook each day. Do those users average 200 Reels per day?

Patrick, I can see users watching (or "consuming") 200 Reels videos per day. Most of the videos are about 10 to 15 seconds long.

So that is 50 minutes per day per user watching Reels videos.

I think Facebook's active daily users is 1.97 billion. So figure about 1 billion watch the Reels videos, which is about in line with your estimate of 1/10.

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Patrick says

https://slaynews.com/economy/meta-fined-24-7-million-for-violating-washington-states-campaign-finance-transparency-law/

It's a small fine for Facebook's criminal activity, but maybe someone knows that larger fines are on the horizon because of Zuckerberg's funding of the ballot-stuffing mules in the 2020 election.

I'm convinced that a lot of that $419 million was for organization of the massive election fraud in 2020, and payments to the fraudsters who stuffed the ballot boxes with fake ballots, taking selfies as they did so in order to get those payments.

Time to buy puts on Meta? Layoffs this week.
https://twitter.com/FirstSquawk/status/1589362536809631744?t=tlXYfycDKM1iAzfooxgKyQ&s=19

Patrick says

This seems implausible to me. 20 for every human on earth? Say only 1/10 of the world is really on Facebook each day. Do those users average 200 Reels per day?

Yes. I don't understand how it makes facebook money though (reels specifically). Ads are sprinkled in between content creators, but people just swipe past them. I have to imagine the conversion rate on those ads is under 1% that result in a sale or hell even a click.

I'll watch reels on the shitter to be honest. Some are funny. I could easily watch 40-60 during my morning sessions if you catch my drift. I don't post, comment or like anything on Facebook. It's honestly information about friends and realizing what a shit show our society has become. In a weird way it's kind of funny. I also use it for services. Going to Mexico next week and need to book a golf cart driver for Isla Mujeres. They're simple down there and FB was the only way to get in contact. We've used them before. It does have communication value for me. I don't like it, but I can deal with it. I was an early user as I was in college once it came out. My privacy is fucked so what difference does it make?

Meta to lay off more than 11,000 employees, or 13% of staff

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meta-to-lay-off-more-than-11000-employees-or-13-of-staff-2022-11-09

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2022/11/09/heres-what-zuckerberg-told-meta-employees.html

Here is the full text of the letter Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent to employees Wednesday:

1337irr says

Time to buy puts on Meta? Layoffs this week.

I think you meant calls...

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/meta-cut-more-jobs-soon-week

meta product is shit.

The users are the product of Meta. My guess is users are way down.

https://slaynews.com/news/facebook-slash-thousands-more-jobs-company-continues-struggle/

Facebook to Slash ‘Thousands More Jobs’ as Company Continues to Struggle

... In recent years, Facebook has gained a reputation for being for older users and has struggled to attract younger audiences.

I'm pretty sure they've lied about their user numbers all along.

Patrick says

I'm pretty sure they've lied about their user numbers all along.

true patrick, its easier to lie about that then to lie about assets and liabilities

.

ad says

I am speaking of all the research and development investments that Meta or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is making such as VR headsets and Facebook Reels.

I do notice Reels has become more popular as more people are using it.

There is no way to know what is becoming popular and what isn't.

Zuckerberg is the biggest fucking liar in Silicon Valley. He lies constantly. Claims about profitability and users, and so on, should be entirely disregarded. He's a fucking liar. Take it from me, I'm here, he's a fucking liar. He lies about what his company does, he engages in illegal activity to bypass privacy on the devices people are STUPID enough to place his software on, he's a fucking criminal.

And he's fully supported by our intelligence agencies.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-hoarded-us-pokemon-cards-120104362.html

Meta ‘hoarded us like Pokemon cards’: Former staffer reveals she had to ‘fight for work’ at company

Silicon Valley VC Keith Rabois of the so-called PayPal Mafia told a banking event earlier this month that Big Tech companies like Meta and Google had hired thousands of people to do “fake work” to hit hiring metrics out of “vanity”—and to stop them working for rivals.

Speaking following layoffs at Google owner Alphabet (12,000) and Meta (11,000 in November and a further 10,000 this month), Insider reported Rabois saying, “There’s nothing for these people to do—it’s all fake work. Now that’s being exposed, what do these people actually do, they go to meetings.”

According to one former member of Meta's staff, Rabois's theory is absolutely true.

Former Meta employee Brit Levy has taken to TikTok to share her "weird" experience in Mark Zuckerberg's social media giant. In a video which has now amassed more than 1 million views, Levy explained: "I was hired in April 2022; three days after I was hired we were asked to take a diversity survey.

"Everyone else that I worked with got to work on stuff but I didn't. So I am one of those employees that was hired into a really strange position where they immediately put me into a group of individuals that was not working.

"I mean, like, we were just sitting there. We had to basically fight to find work. It was a very strange environment and it kind of seemed that Meta was hiring people so that other companies couldn't have us and they were just hoarding us like Pokémon cards."

Meta did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for comment.

'Year of efficiency'
Levy's TikTok comes after Mark Zuckerberg embarked on a "year of efficiency" at Meta, saying the company is "going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t performing or may no longer be as crucial."

Beyond a turbulent economic outlook, inflation, and Fed rate hikes, Meta has had to deal with slowing advertising revenue at the company. At the same time, investors and Meta shareholders have grown critical of Zuckerberg’s decision to steer the company into uncharted waters with his metaverse push, first announced in late 2021.

Responding to a comment from a viewer who said that getting paid to do nothing sounded "awesome," in another video Levy countered that the practice was actually "really screwing up" people's careers.

The mom of two explained: "It's not really getting paid to do nothing, you're getting paid to put your career on hold. You're getting paid a temporary salary that is going to potentially reduce your lifetime earning potential.

"A lot of people turned down other very legitimate good opportunities or they left really good jobs to go to Meta and get in these jobs. Then when they were not doing anything it's like, 'Okay, what is going to happen? I'm not learning new skills, I'm not working on projects.'"

"It puts you in the position where it's really difficult to get another job. It's a tradeoff and it sounds great, but it's going to really screw up people's careers."

Killing time in the metaverse
Levy previously told Insider she was hired on Meta's Sourcer Development Program, a 12-month program that helps workers from underrepresented groups enter the corporate technology recruiting industry. Beginning the program in April, she was laid off after just six months and claims she refused to sign a severance package.

She said people in the program were assigned to different teams, with hers happening to be one of those with a small workload. As a result, she said, she spent her time getting to know employees across the company.

"The participants of the program got placed on different teams throughout Meta," she explained. "The people on those teams were full-time employees who had been with Meta for years—and those people weren't doing anything.

"I had all the time in the world to just message random people: engineers, program managers, project managers. I messaged them and had a 15- to 20-minute conversation about what they did all day and they would tell me they weren't working on anything either.

"We also had groups of people that were doing this thing called dog-fooding which is where you just volunteer to metaquest, go into the metaverse and look and see if you can run into any bugs or glitches and then just report on it. A bunch of people were doing this because we had nothing to do."