Mark Zuckerberg has been on a roller coaster ride these past few years. After the Trump Presidency was spent managing the fallout of Cambridge Analytica, and other political scandals, during the pandemic Zuckerberg went all in on the metaverse. The result of which was a brutal 2022: share price down 64%, the resignation of his deputy Sheryl Sandberg, and a lot of questions about Meta’s focus and ability to fight off TikTok.
2023 has seen far less of a focus on the metaverse and a big turnaround for Zuckerberg. Meta’s share price is up 141% year-to-date, their artificial intelligence offering – Llama 2 – has been well received and meanwhile, all of the focus has been on another billionaire that is doing a much better job destroying a social media company – Elon Musk and Twitter.
At the same time, Zuckerberg has switched from discussing the metaverse to being all in on generative AI and the company has shipping a number of new products this year, from their Twitter-like platform Threads to new hardware like the Quest 3 virtual reality glasses. But many of the questions around the long term future of Meta still remain.
Meta is probably the most polarising company in the world. But it is also integrated into so many aspects of our daily lives. There are 7 platforms globally that have over 1 billion users – Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok and Messenger. Meta owns 4 of them. So the company isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The question is what they will do next and whether Zuckerberg will be able to recreate the early success of Facebook (or the later success of buying Instagram and WhatsApp).
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