Facebook-founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Connect 2021 conference announced that Facebook will no longer be called so. Instead, it would be called Meta in recognition of the company’s new north start, that is, the Metaverse. “To reflect who we are and the future we hope to build, I’m proud to share that our company is […]
The post Mark Zuckerberg burnt $500 billion by renaming Facebook to Meta appeared first on BGR India.
Facebook-founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Connect 2021 conference announced that Facebook will no longer be called so. Instead, it would be called Meta in recognition of the company’s new north start, that is, the Metaverse.
“To reflect who we are and the future we hope to build, I’m proud to share that our company is now Meta…Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together…But all of our products, including our apps, now share a new vision: to help bring the metaverse to life. And now we have a name that reflects the breadth of what we do,” Zuckerberg wrote in the annual founder’s letter, which he shared while making the announcement.
Now, ever since Zuckerberg said that Meta would focus on building technologies for the metaverse, there has been an increased buzz in the tech world with companies across industries developing products for the metaverse or developing a metaverse of their own. Clearly, the race has begun. While the grass might seem all green from this side of the lawn, things from the other side don’t look as good.
New York Mag reports that Meta lost $500 billion of its market capitalisation value since its value in August 2021 and that about half of that value – roughly $240 billion – was lost in a single day when the Facebook-founder made the fate-changing announcement. Furthermore, the report says that the impact of the fall so was bad that Meta, which was once the sixth-largest company in the world by market capitalisation fell out of the top ten to be replaced by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the Chinese giant Tencent.
The report also point out other reasons why Facebook (now Meta) is losing money. As per the report, revelations about the harmful effects of social media by whistleblowers and change in Apple and Google’s ad tracking policies that enable people not to allow companies including Facebook to track users online have made it incredibly difficult for Facebook to gather precious data that made it a treasure trove for advertisers. Change in Google’s model has made Facebook less profitable. Ad to that the stiff competition that the company is facing from TikTok – something that Zuckerberg has already acknowledged in the company’s latest earnings call.
This is not to say that Zuckerberg isn’t rich or Meta isn’t wildly profitable. None of that is true. Both Meta and Zuckerberg have pockets deep enough to go after what might seem like a wild goose chase at the moment. And who knows, one day, some day, we all might be living in Zuckerberg’s dystopian dream.
The post Mark Zuckerberg burnt $500 billion by renaming Facebook to Meta appeared first on BGR India.
