9 ms·

Meta Reports Third Quarter 2023 Results

81 points by loeg 3y ago

ge96 3y ago
Their new headset is pretty impressive for its features and price. Specifically the pass through.
samspenc 3y ago
Revenue up 23%, from $27.7B to $34.1B YoY. Net income is up a whopping 143%, from $4.4B to $11.6B - basically went from a 15% to 34% profit margin (and in line with profit margin numbers from 2021 and prior) No wonder stock is up 4% after earnings.
- rvz 3y ago
  Exactly. But but but we were told that Meta was collapsing 1 year ago for sure due to their massive spending in VR and AR with the stock falling to less than $90. Its almost as if that full emotion took over the markets over and switched on to complete fear mode and was a complete nothing to see here in the end showing that the so-called death of Meta Platforms Inc was over exaggerated by the media. Another earnings beat and it is business as usual, just like before. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256465
  - ksec 3y ago
    Yes and I remember it keeps being repeated since, dare I say the birth of HN? And every few years someone who were happy and bother to summarise how great Facebook is still doing during their quarterly or yearly results, just to irritate the vast majority of HN who wishes to see its death.
- matwood 3y ago
  > Net income is up a whopping 143%, from $4.4B to $11.6B Zuck finally got over his bad VR trip. He was spending current FCF on his bad adventure and it was only a matter of time before someone got him to pull back. They can still do a lot in the space without dropping billions/quarter.
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    Their VR division is still loosing billions and they guided increased loses as they invest more.
    - andybak 3y ago
      > losing billions Isn't the word "spending" in this case?
  - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
    > Zuck finally got over his bad VR trip Whether the trip was bad or not is up to debate, but what makes you think Zuckerberg is quitting on AR/VR? His recent interviews suggest anything but that.
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    What do people want Zuckerberg to do? Not make bets about future tech?
    - rgmerk 3y ago
      Zuck has been throwing tens of billions of dollars at VR and it still hasn't gone mainstream. At what point do you decide that the market just isn't there for the product - or, at least, the market will forever be restricted to fairly serious gamers and sundry small other specialized business applications (eg architectural visualizations)?
      - yCombLinks 3y ago
        It's significantly closer to mainstream since the quest 2 than before. I never saw a VR headset on retail shelves before, and I never heard kids talking about it at all. Now both of those things happen to me occasionally.
        rgmerk 3y ago
        Perhaps I’m getting old, but back in the day it seemed like that when a consumer product was going to be a hit, “everybody” would want it watts and all because the good parts were so compelling people would put up with the rough edges. I mean, I remember when Wolf3D was first released. Some aspects of it - the low-resolution bitmapped NPCs, for instance - were clearly stopgaps. But the over experience was so amazing you were prepared to ignore that. With virtual reality, the argument seems to be “if we just polish it a bit more it’ll be a compelling consumer product”. How many more years of polishing is it going to take?
- paxys 3y ago
  The death of Meta was greatly exaggerated. Wish I had gone in when the stock was taking a beating. They are now up ~250% YoY.
  - paulpauper 3y ago
    I recall seeing all those 'Meta is dead' youtube videos last year. Who cares if you're wrong as long as you get that ad $, right. Even if the Metaverse is a dud and a money pit, the rest of the company is firing on all cylinders.
  - oldbbsnickname 3y ago
    They're spending $10B/yr on servers alone without any product or plan for their use. It's a waste of money if there isn't a roadmap, which there still isn't. EDIT: I work for Meta as an IC6.
    - nixgeek 3y ago
      You're also disparaging your employer on HN and disclosing things they would likely consider company confidential material. Not a great look, and some risk of becoming "Ex-Meta" if you keep doing this sort of thing and they identify you.
      - mdhb 3y ago
        They can say whatever they like about their employer. I can’t even begin to imagine the mentality of admonishing a stranger on the internet because you think they said something that Facebook doesn’t like. It’s fine I promise.
        nixgeek 3y ago
        Agree to disagree honestly. If you don't like your employer to the point you're going to trash talk on HN, find a new job, do something else, and certainly don't disclose information like $'s being spent on infrastructure with "no plan to use" (this person is inevitably covered by an NDA, and that is very likely considered company confidential information by Meta). Always best to assume that even if you post attempting to be anonymous and not filling out 'About Me' that one of your 100's of comments on an internet forum may identify you accidentally or intentionally, and that all your comment history may then trace to you.
- firebirdn99 3y ago
  It was down 4% earlier today from yesterday. Just back to where it was.
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    Fun fact, down 4% and then up 4% puts you slightly below where you were, since 4% of 100 is larger than 4% of 96.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  up 4% after a 200% gain over past year...crazy. a year ago ppl were writing the obituaries for Meta, with viral videos on YouTube about Meta's imminent demise getting millions of views...how poorly those have aged. I have never seen as big of a turnround as this...a half a trillion dollar company with as much upside as penny stocks but much smoother, less risk.
- ksec 3y ago
  This got me interested in what did they spend between the $34B revenue and $11.6B Net income. Cost of revenue 6,210 Research and development 9,241 Marketing and sales 2,877 General and administrative. 2,070 $9B in Research and Development. About $3B of that still belongs to Reality Lab. So even without VR, Facebook still seems to spend relatively a lot of money for their revenue generation. I am surprised by this as I thought their net margin would be quite a bit higher.
  - samspenc 3y ago
    Their profit margins were always around 30% or so, except late-2021 through mid-2022 when it fell dramatically due to higher expenses and (unexpected) flat revenue. As for $9B in research and development - they have 66K employees now. Say 30,000 of them are in engineering, costing the company $300K on average (salary + bonus + benefits + other expenses), that's $9B right there in research.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- grecy 3y ago
  > Went from a 15% to 34% profit margin > Headcount was 66,185 as of September 30, 2023, a decrease of 24% year-over-year. How to increase profit 101.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  > No wonder stock is up 4% after earnings. This was short lived.
  - smugma 3y ago
    Right; down nearly 8% on the day.
nemothekid 3y ago
Meta is almost back to 2021 highs, the whole fallout with ATT and the Metaverse debacle seems to be completely in the rear view mirror now. I should have held the stock, but it seems after the initial panic, it was like trying to catch a falling knife.
- cma 3y ago
  Inflation adjusted it is still far below 2021 highs.
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    sep 10, 2021 - $378.69 oct 25, 2023 - $307.77 would need to be $424.91 "to keep up with inflation" https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=378.69&year1=202109&year2=202309 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=378.69&year1=2...
- paulpauper 3y ago
  This is why I tune out the financial media. The media a year ago was saying Meta was on death's door.
- IKantRead 3y ago
  > I should have held the stock I think the most important wisdom in all of quantitative finance is that the expected future value of a stock it it's current value plus the value from the "risk-free" rate. It happened that Meta did (for now) come back from it's exaggerated death, but just look at Google which took a major hit today.
- ipqk 3y ago
  I actually caught that falling knife at near its exact lowest point ~$90, but then sold it at a 10% gain because I thought it might be a dead cat's bounce. Point is, hindsight is always 20/20.
Narkov 3y ago
> Headcount was 66,185 as of September 30, 2023, a decrease of 24% year-over-year. Huge for a single year.
- samspenc 3y ago
  Somewhat inline with their announcements. Last year they were at 86000 employees, and announced two rounds of layoffs totaling 21000 (11000 followed by another 10000). This number seems to line up with that.
mschuster91 3y ago
How in gods name do they still make such obscene amounts of money?! Like, in my entire social circle including work, no one uses Facebook for more than messaging relatives abroad and most of that has shifted to Whatsapp anyway. Only thing I can imagine is Instagram, but that's gotten completely unusable for me as every second or third post is a fucking ad.
- s0rce 3y ago
  I use marketplace and a few groups because sadly people have migrated to those from other platforms.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Facebook Marketplace is a good product in my opinion. There is a ton of value in ensuring potential buyers/sellers are not scammers.
  - bruceb 3y ago
    Marketplace is decently well done. Still no shortage of scammers.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- asadm 3y ago
  > every second or third post is a fucking ad that's how
- random42_ 3y ago
  > every second or third post is a fucking ad. Maybe that's where the money is coming from?
- shmatt 3y ago
  * Marketplace is the defacto place to buy/sell locally * Groups are about 1000x better in quality and organic posts than Reddit
AustinDev 3y ago
Meta could probably get by with 30,000 employees let's see if Zuck is that ambitious.
- paxys 3y ago
  The goal of a company at that scale isn't go "get by" but rather keep growing infinitely. The majority of the workforce at companies like Meta is always working on new, unreleased projects. So yes, you can cut all of them and suffer no immediate consequences (see – Twitter), but then after the revenue numbers stay flat for a few quarters the shareholders aren't going to be too happy.
  - rossdavidh 3y ago
    Everything you say is true, but I should point out that compared to nearly any other CEO, Zuckerberg doesn't have to care what shareholders think.
    - gardenhedge 3y ago
      How did Zuck manage to be in such a good position?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - tqi 3y ago
        "Facebook has what’s called a “dual class” structure of “Class A” shares and “Class B” shares. The Class A shares are what everyday investors on the regular stock market have access to, and they’re one vote per share. The Class B shares, however, are controlled by Zuckerberg and just a small group of insiders. And every Class B share gets 10 votes." He still owns almost all of the Class B shares, and so has ~61% of the voting power[2]. [1] https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-nyt-wsj https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuck... [2] https://materials.proxyvote.com/Approved/30303M/20230406/NPS_535694/INDEX.HTML?page=70 https://materials.proxyvote.com/Approved/30303M/20230406/NPS...
ilamont 3y ago
So is the Metaverse fever dream truly dead? I see the Meta Quest goggles dropping in price but Meta also began promoting the new Ray Ban "smart glasses": https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/new-ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/new-ray-ban-meta-smart-gla...
- WXLCKNO 3y ago
  They released a new headset, meta quest 3. Maybe why older models are dropping in price, not sure.
- wslh 3y ago
  So is the Metaverse fever dream truly dead? I don't think so. Even if it's not in this or next cycle the idea of portability between different "worlds" seems reasonable in a future. The problem is if this will happen at the Meta (and others) time or a newcomer will appear.
  - bartwr 3y ago
    But we already have this dream. It's called the internet. And video games. And movies. :) The question of "metaverse" is: 1. Do we need a head strapped device? Does it add enough to the experience to justify it? 2. Do we need those experiences be more connected and owned by one rent collecting platform? My answer to both is a firm no, both make it strictly worse. But it's a personal answer, we'll see. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Meta obviously wants it to be double "yes" to sell those head strapped devices and collect this rent. But this doesn't make it true)
    - wslh 3y ago
      First I don't think "metaverse" is clearly defines as "house". In a way similar to Web3. I think Torrent was already part of Web3 as PET (Privacy-enhancing technologies). Now, I don't know if metaverse is equal to a head strapped device but I think one part of this umbrella term is some compatibility between games or worlds like a character that could be useful in different games by different vendors with some features embedded. Regarding VR, I tried the technologies, liked them for "a few minutes", feel the dizziness but mainly the issue I found is a lack of apps. The hardware there is incredible and will be more in the future. But, again, my point is the future, and in the future probably you will just connect it to your brain. Don't know when.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
> ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 31% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 6% year-over-year. How the hell do they keep pumping their impression numbers like this? Seriously I have stark memories of seeing these 20%+ numbers on last years earnings and thinking it was a big problem since there's no way it's sustainable at their size but here we go again.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  The ad density has gone up enormously. They introduced a "suggested for you" feature so they could sparse your friends posts and increase the ad quantity between them without it being perceived as such since they occupy the interstitial slots with viral content. That's why it can't be "disabled" - it's not about keeping you on the platform, it's about subtly increasing ad density between the content you actually want to see in the same way local news uses teasers to string the audience along. Whether this strategy is a level of abusive that leads to atrophy or is sustainable is yet to be determined.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Seriously, we're living in a comedy TV show simulation. "ad density".
FredPret 3y ago
Zuck builds a massive social network. Critics: he'll never monetize it, as soon as I see an ad, I'm out! Zuck monetizes the social network and makes billions. Critics: he's managing the business quarter-to-quarter with no vision for the future. Pretty soon it'll be milked dry! Zuck invests billions in potential future hit technology. Critics: he's lost his mind and should focus on the day-to-day!
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Because no one can predict the future. Maybe by this time next year it will have lost a bunch of money…

81 points by loeg 3y ago

ge96 3y ago

Their new headset is pretty impressive for its features and price. Specifically the pass through.

Revenue up 23%, from $27.7B to $34.1B YoY. Net income is up a whopping 143%, from $4.4B to $11.6B - basically went from a 15% to 34% profit margin (and in line with profit margin numbers from 2021 and prior) No wonder stock is up 4% after earnings.

rvz 3y ago
Exactly. But but but we were told that Meta was collapsing 1 year ago for sure due to their massive spending in VR and AR with the stock falling to less than $90. Its almost as if that full emotion took over the markets over and switched on to complete fear mode and was a complete nothing to see here in the end showing that the so-called death of Meta Platforms Inc was over exaggerated by the media. Another earnings beat and it is business as usual, just like before. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256465
- ksec 3y ago
  Yes and I remember it keeps being repeated since, dare I say the birth of HN? And every few years someone who were happy and bother to summarise how great Facebook is still doing during their quarterly or yearly results, just to irritate the vast majority of HN who wishes to see its death.
matwood 3y ago
> Net income is up a whopping 143%, from $4.4B to $11.6B Zuck finally got over his bad VR trip. He was spending current FCF on his bad adventure and it was only a matter of time before someone got him to pull back. They can still do a lot in the space without dropping billions/quarter.
- justapassenger 3y ago
  Their VR division is still loosing billions and they guided increased loses as they invest more.
  - andybak 3y ago
    > losing billions Isn't the word "spending" in this case?
- SpaceManNabs 3y ago
  > Zuck finally got over his bad VR trip Whether the trip was bad or not is up to debate, but what makes you think Zuckerberg is quitting on AR/VR? His recent interviews suggest anything but that.
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  What do people want Zuckerberg to do? Not make bets about future tech?
  - rgmerk 3y ago
    Zuck has been throwing tens of billions of dollars at VR and it still hasn't gone mainstream. At what point do you decide that the market just isn't there for the product - or, at least, the market will forever be restricted to fairly serious gamers and sundry small other specialized business applications (eg architectural visualizations)?
    - yCombLinks 3y ago
      It's significantly closer to mainstream since the quest 2 than before. I never saw a VR headset on retail shelves before, and I never heard kids talking about it at all. Now both of those things happen to me occasionally.
      - rgmerk 3y ago
        Perhaps I’m getting old, but back in the day it seemed like that when a consumer product was going to be a hit, “everybody” would want it watts and all because the good parts were so compelling people would put up with the rough edges. I mean, I remember when Wolf3D was first released. Some aspects of it - the low-resolution bitmapped NPCs, for instance - were clearly stopgaps. But the over experience was so amazing you were prepared to ignore that. With virtual reality, the argument seems to be “if we just polish it a bit more it’ll be a compelling consumer product”. How many more years of polishing is it going to take?
paxys 3y ago
The death of Meta was greatly exaggerated. Wish I had gone in when the stock was taking a beating. They are now up ~250% YoY.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  I recall seeing all those 'Meta is dead' youtube videos last year. Who cares if you're wrong as long as you get that ad $, right. Even if the Metaverse is a dud and a money pit, the rest of the company is firing on all cylinders.
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  They're spending $10B/yr on servers alone without any product or plan for their use. It's a waste of money if there isn't a roadmap, which there still isn't. EDIT: I work for Meta as an IC6.
  - nixgeek 3y ago
    You're also disparaging your employer on HN and disclosing things they would likely consider company confidential material. Not a great look, and some risk of becoming "Ex-Meta" if you keep doing this sort of thing and they identify you.
    - mdhb 3y ago
      They can say whatever they like about their employer. I can’t even begin to imagine the mentality of admonishing a stranger on the internet because you think they said something that Facebook doesn’t like. It’s fine I promise.
      - nixgeek 3y ago
        Agree to disagree honestly. If you don't like your employer to the point you're going to trash talk on HN, find a new job, do something else, and certainly don't disclose information like $'s being spent on infrastructure with "no plan to use" (this person is inevitably covered by an NDA, and that is very likely considered company confidential information by Meta). Always best to assume that even if you post attempting to be anonymous and not filling out 'About Me' that one of your 100's of comments on an internet forum may identify you accidentally or intentionally, and that all your comment history may then trace to you.
firebirdn99 3y ago
It was down 4% earlier today from yesterday. Just back to where it was.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  Fun fact, down 4% and then up 4% puts you slightly below where you were, since 4% of 100 is larger than 4% of 96.
paulpauper 3y ago
up 4% after a 200% gain over past year...crazy. a year ago ppl were writing the obituaries for Meta, with viral videos on YouTube about Meta's imminent demise getting millions of views...how poorly those have aged. I have never seen as big of a turnround as this...a half a trillion dollar company with as much upside as penny stocks but much smoother, less risk.
ksec 3y ago
This got me interested in what did they spend between the $34B revenue and $11.6B Net income. Cost of revenue 6,210 Research and development 9,241 Marketing and sales 2,877 General and administrative. 2,070 $9B in Research and Development. About $3B of that still belongs to Reality Lab. So even without VR, Facebook still seems to spend relatively a lot of money for their revenue generation. I am surprised by this as I thought their net margin would be quite a bit higher.
- samspenc 3y ago
  Their profit margins were always around 30% or so, except late-2021 through mid-2022 when it fell dramatically due to higher expenses and (unexpected) flat revenue. As for $9B in research and development - they have 66K employees now. Say 30,000 of them are in engineering, costing the company $300K on average (salary + bonus + benefits + other expenses), that's $9B right there in research.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
grecy 3y ago
> Went from a 15% to 34% profit margin > Headcount was 66,185 as of September 30, 2023, a decrease of 24% year-over-year. How to increase profit 101.
almost_usual 3y ago
> No wonder stock is up 4% after earnings. This was short lived.
- smugma 3y ago
  Right; down nearly 8% on the day.

nemothekid 3y ago

Meta is almost back to 2021 highs, the whole fallout with ATT and the Metaverse debacle seems to be completely in the rear view mirror now. I should have held the stock, but it seems after the initial panic, it was like trying to catch a falling knife.

cma 3y ago
Inflation adjusted it is still far below 2021 highs.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  sep 10, 2021 - $378.69 oct 25, 2023 - $307.77 would need to be $424.91 "to keep up with inflation" https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=378.69&year1=202109&year2=202309 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=378.69&year1=2...
paulpauper 3y ago
This is why I tune out the financial media. The media a year ago was saying Meta was on death's door.
IKantRead 3y ago
> I should have held the stock I think the most important wisdom in all of quantitative finance is that the expected future value of a stock it it's current value plus the value from the "risk-free" rate. It happened that Meta did (for now) come back from it's exaggerated death, but just look at Google which took a major hit today.
ipqk 3y ago
I actually caught that falling knife at near its exact lowest point ~$90, but then sold it at a 10% gain because I thought it might be a dead cat's bounce. Point is, hindsight is always 20/20.

Narkov 3y ago

> Headcount was 66,185 as of September 30, 2023, a decrease of 24% year-over-year. Huge for a single year.

samspenc 3y ago
Somewhat inline with their announcements. Last year they were at 86000 employees, and announced two rounds of layoffs totaling 21000 (11000 followed by another 10000). This number seems to line up with that.

mschuster91 3y ago

How in gods name do they still make such obscene amounts of money?! Like, in my entire social circle including work, no one uses Facebook for more than messaging relatives abroad and most of that has shifted to Whatsapp anyway. Only thing I can imagine is Instagram, but that's gotten completely unusable for me as every second or third post is a fucking ad.

s0rce 3y ago
I use marketplace and a few groups because sadly people have migrated to those from other platforms.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Facebook Marketplace is a good product in my opinion. There is a ton of value in ensuring potential buyers/sellers are not scammers.
- bruceb 3y ago
  Marketplace is decently well done. Still no shortage of scammers.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
asadm 3y ago
> every second or third post is a fucking ad that's how
random42_ 3y ago
> every second or third post is a fucking ad. Maybe that's where the money is coming from?
shmatt 3y ago
* Marketplace is the defacto place to buy/sell locally * Groups are about 1000x better in quality and organic posts than Reddit

AustinDev 3y ago

Meta could probably get by with 30,000 employees let's see if Zuck is that ambitious.

paxys 3y ago
The goal of a company at that scale isn't go "get by" but rather keep growing infinitely. The majority of the workforce at companies like Meta is always working on new, unreleased projects. So yes, you can cut all of them and suffer no immediate consequences (see – Twitter), but then after the revenue numbers stay flat for a few quarters the shareholders aren't going to be too happy.
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  Everything you say is true, but I should point out that compared to nearly any other CEO, Zuckerberg doesn't have to care what shareholders think.
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    How did Zuck manage to be in such a good position?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - tqi 3y ago
      "Facebook has what’s called a “dual class” structure of “Class A” shares and “Class B” shares. The Class A shares are what everyday investors on the regular stock market have access to, and they’re one vote per share. The Class B shares, however, are controlled by Zuckerberg and just a small group of insiders. And every Class B share gets 10 votes." He still owns almost all of the Class B shares, and so has ~61% of the voting power[2]. [1] https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-nyt-wsj https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuck... [2] https://materials.proxyvote.com/Approved/30303M/20230406/NPS_535694/INDEX.HTML?page=70 https://materials.proxyvote.com/Approved/30303M/20230406/NPS...

ilamont 3y ago

So is the Metaverse fever dream truly dead? I see the Meta Quest goggles dropping in price but Meta also began promoting the new Ray Ban "smart glasses": https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/new-ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/new-ray-ban-meta-smart-gla...

WXLCKNO 3y ago
They released a new headset, meta quest 3. Maybe why older models are dropping in price, not sure.
wslh 3y ago
So is the Metaverse fever dream truly dead? I don't think so. Even if it's not in this or next cycle the idea of portability between different "worlds" seems reasonable in a future. The problem is if this will happen at the Meta (and others) time or a newcomer will appear.
- bartwr 3y ago
  But we already have this dream. It's called the internet. And video games. And movies. :) The question of "metaverse" is: 1. Do we need a head strapped device? Does it add enough to the experience to justify it? 2. Do we need those experiences be more connected and owned by one rent collecting platform? My answer to both is a firm no, both make it strictly worse. But it's a personal answer, we'll see. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Meta obviously wants it to be double "yes" to sell those head strapped devices and collect this rent. But this doesn't make it true)
  - wslh 3y ago
    First I don't think "metaverse" is clearly defines as "house". In a way similar to Web3. I think Torrent was already part of Web3 as PET (Privacy-enhancing technologies). Now, I don't know if metaverse is equal to a head strapped device but I think one part of this umbrella term is some compatibility between games or worlds like a character that could be useful in different games by different vendors with some features embedded. Regarding VR, I tried the technologies, liked them for "a few minutes", feel the dizziness but mainly the issue I found is a lack of apps. The hardware there is incredible and will be more in the future. But, again, my point is the future, and in the future probably you will just connect it to your brain. Don't know when.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

> ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 31% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 6% year-over-year. How the hell do they keep pumping their impression numbers like this? Seriously I have stark memories of seeing these 20%+ numbers on last years earnings and thinking it was a big problem since there's no way it's sustainable at their size but here we go again.

kristopolous 3y ago
The ad density has gone up enormously. They introduced a "suggested for you" feature so they could sparse your friends posts and increase the ad quantity between them without it being perceived as such since they occupy the interstitial slots with viral content. That's why it can't be "disabled" - it's not about keeping you on the platform, it's about subtly increasing ad density between the content you actually want to see in the same way local news uses teasers to string the audience along. Whether this strategy is a level of abusive that leads to atrophy or is sustainable is yet to be determined.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Seriously, we're living in a comedy TV show simulation. "ad density".

FredPret 3y ago

Zuck builds a massive social network. Critics: he'll never monetize it, as soon as I see an ad, I'm out! Zuck monetizes the social network and makes billions. Critics: he's managing the business quarter-to-quarter with no vision for the future. Pretty soon it'll be milked dry! Zuck invests billions in potential future hit technology. Critics: he's lost his mind and should focus on the day-to-day!

ChatGTP 3y ago
Because no one can predict the future. Maybe by this time next year it will have lost a bunch of money…