Research archive for META

Michael wrote yesterday about Facebook and their collaboration with EssilorLuxottica to make Ray-Ban Stories, which are basically Wayfarer sunglasses with fancy cameras and speakers in them.

Last week Facebook announced that they have teamed up with EssilorLuxottica to make the world's first set of smart glasses that aren't cringe-worthy. The glasses will be sold through the Ray-Ban brand and the default models resemble the classic Wayfarer frames.

On Wednesday night Facebook released bone-crunching second quarter numbers. Revenues increased by 56% to $29 billion, and $28.6 billion of that came from advertising. So yes, this is a social media company that is really an advertising platform. Net income (profit) was $10 billion. I remember when the company listed in 2012 it made no money at all. The shares have been a 10-bagger since then.

Facebook recently announced that it plans to pay content creators over $1 billion by the end of 2022. The social media giant will pay creators through a new bonus program designed to encourage creatives to publish their work first on Facebook and Instagram.

Yesterday a US federal judge dismissed two antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), claiming that it has a monopoly in social networking.

Facebook launched its own social audio feature as it pushes to compete with Clubhouse, Discord and Twitter Spaces. The big differentiator is that its own version will allow listeners to send Facebook's virtual currency "stars" to content creators in the live audio rooms.

As we mentioned in previous newsletters, last week Facebook released numbers that demolished Wall Street expectations. Revenue came in at $26 billion, generating earnings of $3.30 per share thanks to average revenue per user coming in at $9.27. Wall Street was expecting $23 billion, $2.37 and $8.40, respectively.

The Pew Research Center did a survey to find out what social media platforms people use and how much time they spend on those platforms. The numbers prove that social media is a winner takes all business and Mark Zuckerberg comes up top.

People have their doubts about Facebook. The tech team at Axios (Ina Fried, Sara Fischer and Ashley Gold) did an in-depth investigation, and found that the business is really booming. Take a look at the chart below, which shows the regional growth over the last decade.

Facebook came out with earnings that comfortably beat the street's expectations , but this was overshadowed by management's tone about future earnings. The social media company said that the pandemic won't last forever, and changes to targeted online advertising could impact the company in the short-term as it adapts.

I'm highly annoyed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges against Facebook. In fact, I'm outraged. Maybe I should make a Blunders episode about this issue!?

Last week Facebook released third quarter results which comfortably beat expectations. In fact, this was the largest Dollar beat in their history. Revenues grew by $3.8bn to $21.2bn. Expectations were for $19.5bn. Earnings were also well ahead of expectations. They made $2.71 per share versus expectations of $1.90. This represented 28% growth form this quarter last year.

According to news reports, yesterday was Instagram's 10th birthday. In case you forgot, Instagram was acquired by the Facebook group just two years after it was founded. So it's been in the fold for the last eight years.

Facebook have teamed up with Ray-Ban to make smart glasses. You may feel like you have seen this movie before? That is because you have. A similar collaboration was announced between Google Glass and Luxottica (maker of Ray-Bans and many others) a few years ago. Unfortunately, Google Glasses never really took off and got scrapped.

Political activists have been moaning about Facebook, accusing them of not removing content on the platform that they find offensive. They also accuse the company of not doing enough to promote [insert your favourite cause here] or combat [insert the name of your best enemy here].