At the moment, Meta is not doing very well, and it does not appear that this situation will improve any time soon. Over the course of this year, Meta’s share price has dropped by more than 70 percent. Because of this, investors no longer have faith in the company or the opportunities it may create in the future. Similar to how Facebook and Instagram are losing ground to newer competitors like TikTok and Snapchat among the millennial generation.
Why exactly should Meta be worried about where it stands in the market? The company’s value has plummeted from an all-time high of more than 1 trillion USD in 2021 to a meager 270 billion USD now!
Regrettably, it has been asserted that Mark Zuckerberg is the central figure in the series of unfortunate events. Mark’s inability to accurately predict the future, together with his executive shenanigans, contributed to Facebook’s gradual demise to its current state. It was said that Mark had become so introspective to the point where he considered himself as the only person at Meta, to the point where he ignored the advice and direction of people like his former COO, Sheryl Sanderberg. Reportedly, he disregarded the opinions of the board of directors. As a result of some of these executive blunders, it was stated that in 2013, he made a fleeting incursion and diversion into the business of phone manufacture, which finally turned out to be a waste of effort. The following year, Mark spent over 10 billion USD on research and development for Reality Labs and purchased Oculus VR for 2 billion USD. Investors also appear to be concerned about the costly endeavor that Meta is undertaking to construct the metaverse. The metaverse is a digital environment that users may enter by donning virtual reality or augmented reality headsets. However, these investments are not producing the returns that were anticipated. The term “virtual reality” (VR) refers to a technology that will become widespread in the next one to two decades. Evidently, this is a future for which no one is now prepared, which is one of the many reasons why the Horizon world is such a pity. At the moment m ore than 5 billion US dollars have been spent on Horizon world, which would lead Palmer Luckey to claim that it was a disastrous investment.
Again, in April of 2021, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, advised iphone users to turn off targeted advertisements. This advice wreaked unthinkable havoc on the finances of Facebook, which caused AdRevenues to plummet to a level from which they have not recovered. It was estimated that this fundamental shift was responsible for the loss of around 10 billion USD. Mark had a difficult time breaking the App Tracking Transparency code, which was a fatal blow delivered by one of the seasoned professionals in the technology area. This resulted in a significant loss of revenue for Mark as a result of the migration of many marketers and influencers to other social media platforms. It would appear that Mark is engaged in a struggle with TikTok, which undoubtedly has already consumed its lunch!
Indeed, there are others who believe that Facebook’s decision to put money into virtual reality is unethical. A year ago, the market valuation of Facebook reached a peak of 1 trillion US dollars, but it is now only worth 268 billion US dollars, representing a drop of more than 700 billion US dollars. As a result, his personal worth has decreased by more than $88 billion, as measured by Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
As a result of the worldwide economic slowdown, Meta’s troubles do not appear to have subsided. Clearly, this raises a new set of difficulties at a time when the surviving advertisers are reducing their investment. If a stock has lost over 70 percent of its value, it is quite doubtful that many people will be interested in purchasing it. What if Mark hires another CEO to take over the reins of Meta so that he can focus his time and energy on Facebook and let someone else manage the company’s virtual reality lab? Even better, Mark could simply step away from Meta and let someone else take the reins of the company.
