Bottom not yet reached: market value of Facebook parent company Meta plummets | Tech

Mark Zuckerberg’s company loses more than $75 billion in value due to the stock market crash. In February, Meta lost nearly $200 billion in value in one day. That’s still a record.

Meta saw quarterly revenue drop again due to declining advertising revenue. Advertisers have become a lot more reserved due to the deteriorating economic outlook. A further decline is also expected for the current quarter.

In addition, Meta’s profit halved, mainly due to higher costs. The company continues to invest a lot of money in the metaverse. That dream project of CEO Mark Zuckerberg consists of a virtual world in which people can do all kinds of business from their own home. The part reality labs, which the project falls under, already suffered a loss of more than $9 billion this year and the losses will increase further in 2023, according to the company. Morgan Stanley analysts lowered its rating for the stock in response to the company’s disappointing results and outlook.

Zuckerberg’s company is in a perfect storm (with a rare combination of circumstances drastically exacerbating the event). It’s pumping billions into developing technology for the metaverse, a sort of permanent virtual environment that proponents say is the future of the Internet. But that doesn’t make any money, while Facebook itself is worn out, the social network that is still the largest source of income for Meta.

The greater competition for Meta’s social media, from TikTok, among others, does not help. In addition, advertisers are less willing to spend money to reach users of Meta products. The global economy is not optimal and the tech giant feels that in the income.

Zuckerberg also increasingly clashes with another tech giant: Apple. Since April last year, iPhone users have been receiving a notification asking if they want to be tracked. In the iOS privacy settings it is even possible to completely turn off such a request. This affects companies such as Meta directly, because as a result they have less data about the behavior of Facebook users, for example. That makes ads less effective and so they get less money for it. Meta estimates it will cost $10 billion in revenue.

In addition, Apple itself offers more and more options for advertising in apps from the tech giant itself. Moreover, they are not covered by the new privacy option. For example, since this week it is possible to advertise in more places in the App Store. However, this is not without criticism from app developers who focus on iPhones and iPads, but it does bring in lots of money for Apple. Four billion dollars a year, according to market research firm Insider Intelligence, writes ‘Wired’.

If that’s not enough, it was also revealed yesterday that Apple has changed the rules of the App Store, forcing companies like Meta to pay more money to the iPhone manufacturer. That too could not count on applause from Zuckerberg’s company, according to ‘CNBC’.