If Only I Were THIIIIS Much Smarter…
The reason you are reading this is because I quit Facebook for good last year and for some reason, you still wanted to hear from me. And I still wanted to write for you. So here we are.
Well, apparently, I am not the only one who is fed up with the cesspool that is Facebook.
Last night, after the market closed, Facebook (or “Meta” as the company is now known because Mark Zuckerberg thinks changing the name of the company will make us forget that he and his company are a shitstain on civilization) announced quarterly earnings and they were dismal.
Wall Street promptly took Facebook (I mean “Meta”) stock out back and shot it.
There were multiple reasons for the bloodbath:
1.) Facebook (I mean “Meta”) is spending the equivalent of the GDP of the Baltic nations on trying to get us to buy into its idiotic Oculus/Metaverse vision.
2.) Last year, Apple announced a change in its privacy settings on iOS devices. Now, you are automatically “opted-out” of targeted advertising by default. You must proactively give apps, like Facebook, permission to target you. Most people choose NOT to allow Mark Zuckerberg to follow them around the Internet all day and night and so Facebook’s value prop to advertisers – super-duper accurate targeting – went way down and as a result, advertisers decided to think twice about Facebook as a place to spend their ad dollars, to the tune of about $10 billion AWAY from Facebook.
3.) People (like me) are just saying “no” to Facebook. For the first time in its 18-year history, Facebook LOST active daily users. Whether quitting Facebook altogether, or just never signing on and actively participating, or being in the coveted 18-24 target advertising demo and changing your mind every three days about what is “cool” (or “groovy” or “phat” – whatever the kids are saying today), Facebook is losing active users by the cargo shipload (now you know why there’s a supply chain problem).
4.) Where are those people going? Anywhere besides Facebook, but mostly TikTok.
I personally know dozens of people who just don’t bother with Facebook anymore. They haven’t deleted their accounts altogether, but I suspect that is coming. They just don’t log on more than a handful of times per year.
So, Facebook (I mean “Meta”) is misfiring on multiple cylinders. It knows it has a HUGE user and advertising problem, so it is spending money like a drunken kangaroo in a whorehouse (I just made that phrase up, but I am hoping it goes viral any day now. If only I were on Facebook…) to try to come up with a metaverse business model before Facebook goes the way of MySpace (the hot social media platform during the Coolidge administration.)
As mentioned, Wall Street was pissed and the stock is down about 25 percent as of this writing on Thursday, February 3, 2022. That’s a loss of about $230 billion in value. Poof! Gone! Just like that! To put THAT in perspective, Facebook lost the equivalent of almost the total value of Coca-Cola Company in the first 30 seconds of trading this morning.
If I had been just a bit smarter, I would have seen this coming. Apple’s privacy changes, people quitting, the Metaverse farce: all of this added up to the smartest money on Wall Street shorting (that is, betting against) Facebook (I mean “Meta”) stock.
Alas, I am not even close to that smart. Or that brave. Short-selling stocks takes ice water in veins to do. I am more of a “widows and orphans” type of investor.
Now the question is: Is Facebook’s (I mean Meta’s) future really as bleak as the stock price action today would have us believe? Who knows. But even if I thought Facebook (I mean “Meta”) was oversold, I am not a buyer because I don’t want to be part owner of a purveyor of swill like Facebook (I mean “Meta) any more than I want to own stock in tobacco or porn.
So, I will sit back, smoke a cigarette, watch some porn and enjoy the spectacle of Facebook (I mean “Meta”) falling on its face.