Let's get to David Kirkpatrick now he's founder and editor in chief of Taconomy to discuss the day's earnings from Meta and David cootally sales falling for the first time ever. I would have made to have to say about this. Well, they said that it's probably going to be difficult. Advertising environment is going to continue, and I'm sure they're right about that. The company is poorly positioned in a number of ways, and um it's growth is going to be
dramatically less this year. It will still grow for the year, but probably more than ten points less than it has in other recent years. And you know, this is a company that's never really been through a real downturn, which is what the economy is dealing it now, and it's just figuring out how to handle it. David. As you know, these results mark the end of the career for ad Meta. For Cheryl Sandberg, she's now stepping down as the chief
operating officer. What does her departure mean for this company as it faces a more challenging future. I think it's poor timing for the company that Cheryl Sandberg is leaving now, even though it seems to me that she hasn't done as good a job as I would have hoped, and I think many of us hoped in sort of restraining some of Zuckerberg's more destructive instincts. That she hasn't helped enough to ameliorate harmful speech and political disinformation that's flowing
in country after country. But nonetheless, she is a more experienced business leader than anyone else really at the company and senior positions, and to lose her now when the company is facing such extreme headwinds seems very unfortunate, really sad. And I also think Facebook Meta is just not going to feel the same without Cheryl Sandberg, even to its
own employees, and I think that's a risky transition. Well, we've got some other changing of the God's admit her as well, and you SEEFO, how significant is this move? I think it's not terribly significant, because you know, at Meta, nobody really has power except for Zuckerberg, which goes back to what I was saying about Cheryl Sandberg. She ended up not really having power, which I think is one
reason she left. Dave Wayner, who has been the CFO since, is moving into a Chief Strategy role, which is a newly created position and one that I think, you know, may suit him. Uh. We we don't really know what he's thinking about strategy would be, I don't think but uh. And they've promoted somebody from within to be the new CFO. UM. I don't see that as a major change in terms
of the company's long term direction. What they have to deal with is a declining economic environment that hurts advertising and a what I consider ill advised, early premature, shall we say, transition to a metaverse growth strategy long before there's really a business there. And I think that that is seriously problematic. But they're also being pressured, aren't they not by competition from TikTok And what how are they going to crack that nut? Well, that's a good question,
It's absolutely true. I mean, TikTok is the increasing you know, bear in the room that's really threatening all the other consumer social media companies, especially on Facebook metas Instagram product um. And they are furiously attempting to change the design of both Instagram and Facebook to put more short form video that isn't created by your friends in front of the average user, which is sort of the way that TikTok works. Um. They don't really have an answer, though, I don't think
those efforts have born enough fruit even remotely. So far, m TikTok continues to grow, continues to be by far of the de facto choice of young people in pretty much every developed country and increasingly the developing world. So it's a problem. It's a real problem. TikTok's executing beautifully. Um Instagram and Facebook are not. I just want to return to that remark that you made about the metaverse and how the will may not quite be ready for it.
Can you explain your your logical a little bit more? Dan, Well, you know, I think one of the reasons that Time magazines new cover story is that the metaverse is going to change everything. You know, Facebook meta really did an extraordinarily successful pr move when it changed its name at exactly the moment when criticism was at its height for Facebook's failures to remediate harmful speech and disinformation, particularly in the political realm, and they did a great job of
changing the narrative and the world ate it up. And now, because this massive company changed its name, I think there it's become acceptable to believe that the metaverse is the next phase of technology in the near term. I accept that long term, some combination of virtual and physical and you know, a r VR world will be a major, major opportunity for consumer tech, but it is not anywhere in the near term. And one reason it's not even if it were a big deal in the United States
and Europe. You know, this company's business is a global business. They're huge in India, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, et cetera. Most of users in those places do not have high bandwidth connections or technology that can really be used for a metaverse type experience, and the chances that that will happen in the near term, I think are very small. So it's really a developed world strategy that's premature even
for the developer. Interesting too, today that we had the FTC suing to block metas acquisition of the virtual reality company within limited, maybe that's gonna also create a bit of uh, some restraint. David, Thanks for being with us and sharing your perspective. Always appreciated. David Kirkpatrick, founder and editor in chief Technoomy, discussing the meta earnings today and the disappointment on that front,