Facebook parent company Meta made a cautious recovery with its first earnings report since its disastrous fourth quarter, with shares going up 13 percent in after-hours trading. The earnings represent a slight recovery, with daily active users on Facebook now slightly above analyst estimates.
But still, Meta’s 7 recent revenue growth year-over-year remained the smallest it has reported ever in its decade-long history and was down 21 percent from a year prior.
The new quarter report shows total revenue for the quarter at $27.91 billion and is Meta’s first since a dramatic report in February where Meta lost a record whopping $230 billion in market value after revealing that Facebook had recorded its first-ever drop in daily user numbers.
Analysts say the report was mixed overall.
Meta keeps rebranding its products and shaking up its business model. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will focus more on the new “metaverse,” which is a virtual reality platform, rather than focus on its core social media business, like Facebook and Instagram.
Analysts warn that Meta’s investment in the metaverse will be slow to pay off.
But the metaverse has received a lot of bad press recently. Recent reports show intense amounts of assault, racism, and sexism in the metaverse. A new documentary is diving into just how horrifying Zuckerberg’s new virtual world is. And the space can be accessed by children as young as seven.
People are reporting being virtually sexually assaulted and ganged upon, as well as being harassed and verbally assaulted with hate speech, sexism and racism.
But Zuckerberg is pouring his cash into this virtual world, gracing the new sphere with a strong amount of cash on hand. Meta announced earlier this month its plans to monetize the metaverse, including a creator fund to monetize virtual reality creations.
Still, adoption rates for the metaverse are low. And reports about the violence and danger lying within won’t help it, experts and analysts say.
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