administrative errors said:

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It'll be like collecting scalps back in the wild west

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Ulysses90 said:

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Consider that Zuckerberg knew Facebook was shedding users when they announced th name change to Meta. He is flailing because growth not only stalled but his users are leaving.

Facebook is a company that does not know how to create content. Their content is their users and whatever entertainment value user posted content generates. It's getting very stale because their censorship and insistence on ideogical conformity. Advertisers are not goint to keep paying for access to a shrinking population that is just an echo chamber of crap.

That's why Zuckerberg is betting everything on VR and VR and proprietary Oculus hardware. His hope is that 3D user created content save Facebook from it own creative stagnation. Facebook Horizon isn't even drawing flies. It's like Secondlife VR, but without legs.

https://m.facebook.com/horizonworlds/

https://m.facebook.com/horizonworlds/

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Quote:

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Apple Made a Change That Is Hammering Internet Companies Like Meta
. . .
Apple's vision of a more private web is not necessarily a more profitable one for internet companies that depend on advertising revenue.

That lesson was clear on Wednesday in an earnings report from Meta, the company that Mark Zuckerberg founded as Facebook. Meta said that privacy features introduced by Apple last year could cost Mr. Zuckerberg's company $10 billion in lost sales this year.

The news, along with increased spending as Meta tries to focus on the new idea of a metaverse, dropped Meta's stock price more than 26 percent on Thursday morning. Mr. Zuckerberg said Wednesday that Apple's changes and new privacy regulations in Europe represented "a clear trend where less data is available to deliver personalized ads."

Meta's warning and its cratering stock price were reminders that even among tech giants, Apple holds extraordinary sway because of its control of the iPhone. And the tech industry received a clear notice that a long-planned shift in how people's information may be used online was having a dramatic impact on Madison Avenue and internet companies that have spent years building businesses around selling ads.
. . .
The changes have far-reaching repercussions that may hurt consumers, Mr. Seufert said, though consumers are overwhelmingly choosing not to be tracked. While Meta and other big media companies develop new methods to target people with ads, some smaller brands, whose ads can no longer reach new customers, have a solution to their problem: raise prices.

Apple made significant changes to the privacy settings of its mobile operating system last year, allowing iPhone users to choose whether advertisers could track them. Since Apple introduced the feature, a vast majority of iPhone users have opted to block tracking.

Only 24 percent of iPhone users around the world have consented to being tracked by advertisers, according to data published in December by the analytics company Flurry. That means that a broad swath of iPhone users are evading the personal tracking preferred by advertisers.

It has been a dismaying shift for advertisers, which have for years tracked people online in order to determine how many sales their clients were making. Advertisers also rely on tracking to resurface products that consumers have viewed but not yet purchased, reminding them that it might be time to buy. But for privacy activists, the change is a welcome check against surveillance that puts power back into the hands of everyday technology users.

"We believe the impact of iOS overall is a headwind on our business in 2022," said Dave Wehner, Meta's chief financial officer, during a call with analysts on Wednesday. "It's on the order of $10 billion, so it's a pretty significant headwind for our business."
. . .
Meta's estimated loss resulting from these limits is comparable to what the company is losing on the metaverse. Meta said its pivot to the metaverse which could in theory help it step away from Apple's influence was eating into its profit. The company views the metaverse as the next generation of the internet, in which people will share virtual experiences. It lost more than $10 billion in 2021 as it built the virtual reality goggles and smart glasses that will make it possible for users to access the metaverse.

Although Meta said revenue rose 20 percent in the three months ending in December, to $33.7 billion, compared with the same period a year earlier, the company's quarterly profits fell 8 percent, to $10.3 billion.

Mr. Wehner added that Apple's iOS changes buoyed the ad business of Google, which is not dependent on Apple for advertising data.
. . .
But Apple, which reported its fourth-quarter earnings last week, indicated that privacy was profitable. Despite supply chain disruptions, Apple said that sales of iPhones totaled $71.6 billion, up 9 percent from a year earlier. The smartphone maker reported an 11 percent increase in revenue and a 20 percent jump in profit.

Apple has made privacy a key part of its marketing for the iPhone and other products, giving customers the ability to opt out of tracking and providing steps to make tracking more difficult in its browser, Safari. But Apple has continued to allow apps like Facebook to track users in aggregate, as long as they do not seek to personally identify users.

Last year, Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, making his company's message clear, said that the advertising industry had become an ecosystem of "trackers and hucksters just looking to make a quick buck."

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infinity ag said:

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