Meta has 18 years remaining on its lease at 1 Triton Square, but the company paid the equivalent of seven years’ rent to end it early.

In 2021, Meta committed to leasing an extensively refurbished eight-storey building in Regent’s Park near the UK capital, London. However, Meta never actually moved into the office building. In December, the company said it had “decided to sublet its Triton Square offices”.

The move comes after Mark Zuckerberg declared a “Year of Efficiency,” during which the company laid off 21,000 employees. Some employees in hybrid working arrangements have also been told to share desks. In December, Meta moved out of two of its New York offices.

Meta has three other London offices still open, one of which is just 120 yards from Triton Square and spans ten floors.

Meta said in late 2022 that it was undertaking “an ongoing rationalization of our office footprint” as part of cost-cutting measures.

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After Threads launched on July 5, the number of users quickly grew to more than 100 million, but most of them were lost quickly, with daily active users dropping by 70% after two weeks and by 85% by mid-August. Thread’s lack of functionality is one of the reasons for user loss, the biggest flaw is that there is no web version available. The Wall Street Journal reports that the web version is one of Threads’ most-anticipated features. Currently, Threads’ web interface only allows users to view specific threads through a browser.

It is noticed that Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said on his Instagram personal homepage on Friday that the web version of Threads will be launched soon and has been tested within Meta.

The report also pointed out that people familiar with the Meta plan said that while the current plan is to launch a web version this week, these plans are uncertain and may change.

Sam Saliba, a Silicon Valley tech executive and former head of global brand marketing at Instagram, said, “The web version of Threads will be a major advantage for Meta over the competition with X, and it will give the company a wider reach, more features and better data collection capabilities.”

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 It's been a good week for Threads. The community here is growing as I expected, and I want to build a long-term and vibrant app. In the future, although there is still a lot to do, I am still excited about the pace at which our team operates. Search functionality and a (full) web version are coming in the next few weeks.

As of press time, when you open Threads on your computer, you can still only view specific posts instead of the full version of the page, and the home page will prompt users to download the iOS and Android versions of the app.

It was previously reported that one month after the launch of Threads, a social app considered by Meta as a “Twitter killer”, user engagement has dropped to a new low.

As of July 31, Threads’ daily active users were down 82% from when it first launched, with just 8 million daily users accessing the app, according to Sensor Tower. In response to an interview with foreign media CNN, Sensor Tower stated that the current Threads application data is at its lowest level since its release, and the number of active users per day has dropped by an average of 1%. The frequency of people opening Threads has also decreased, with the average time spent by users on the platform dropping from 21 minutes initially to 4 minutes, showing that “users are opening the app just by inertia, browsing for a while and then closing it.”

At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg also said in an internal speech last month that Threads lost more than half of its users within a few weeks of its launch, so the focus should be on retention. “If hundreds of millions of people sign up and at least half of them stay, that would be great. It’s clearly not there yet.”

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On Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the launch of Threads “far exceeded our expectations.”

While several Wall Street analysts believe Threads will have limited impact on Meta’s financials in the short term, as the company is currently focused on growth rather than profitability, an Evercore ISI analyst sees the new app as having “little to no impact on Meta’s current business.” Negative impact, but creates opportunities for revenue and profit growth for the company.”

“Over the next few years, we estimate that Threads could reach close to 200 million daily active users (90% of Twitter’s 240 million daily active users at the time of the acquisition) and generate $8 billion in annual revenue, equivalent to our 5% growth in Meta’s 2025 revenue forecast. Assuming a 50% gross margin, we estimate that the $8 billion in revenue generated by Threads will generate nearly $1.50 in additional EPS, equivalent to Meta’s projected 2025 EPS 6% to 7% growth,” the analyst said in a client note.

The analyst reiterated his “outperform” rating on Meta Platforms stock and identified it as a top pick. He has a $350 price target on the social media giant’s stock.

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Threads, a social app under Meta, was officially launched today. Mark Zuckerberg wrote “Let’s get started, welcome to Threads” in the first post on the platform.

▲ Screenshot of Threads official website

According to a previous report, Threads is now on the Apple App Store, rising to the 27th place in the “social” category. The app currently doesn’t see any ads, and it also allows users to connect to Instagram and keep their fans and username, which may play a positive role in attracting users to settle in.

▲ Threads demo page

The app introduction shows that users can discuss topics, trends and everything in the app community. No matter what users are interested in, they can follow and directly connect with their favorite creators and others who like the same things, share their thoughts, opinions, etc. with the world.

It is reported that Threads allows people to post text and links, reply or forward other people’s messages. Functionally, Threads will undoubtedly compete with Twitter.

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Thierry Breton tweeted: “I met Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Menlo Park to discuss EU digital regulations such as DSA, DMA (EU Digital Market Act) and AI Act. had a productive discussion,” he added, adding that around 1,000 Meta employees are working on the DSA.

Thierry Bretonsaid in early June that Meta had until August 25 to announce the steps it planned to take to comply with the EU’s online content rules, known as the DSA, or face severe sanctions.

Meta has yet to comment on the news.

It was previously reported that the DSA prohibits online platforms from placing certain types of advertisements, such as those targeted at children or generated using special categories of personal data such as race, political views and sexual orientation.

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Meta spokesperson Iska Saric confirmed that Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram post was not a joke.

Elon Musk has been mocking Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter with wisecracks like “Zuck my ” following recent news that Meta was about to launch a Twitter competitor. At Meta’s internal all-hands meeting last week, Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer, told employees that the company believes creators want a version of Twitter that “operates sanely. In addition, Mark Zuckerberg said in a recent interview on the Lex Fridman podcast, “I’ve always thought Twitter should have a billion users.”

In terms of tech CEOs fighting, Elon Musk versus Mark Zuckerberg seems appropriate. Musk, 51, has the size advantage, having said he was involved in “real street fights” growing up in South Africa. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, 39, is an aspiring MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter who recently won a jiu-jitsu tournament and claims to have recently completed a grueling “Murphy Challenge” workout in less than 40 minutes. Regardless of who wins, the fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will be interesting to watch.

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According to the Deloitte report, economic gains could come from the use of these technologies in defense, medical and manufacturing, as well as entertainment use cases such as video games and communications. The Metaverse concept includes augmented reality and virtual reality technologies that allow users to immerse themselves in virtual worlds, or overlay digital information on images of the real world.

In 2021, Meta focuses the company on building the Metaverse technology, which it predicts will eventually replace mobile devices as the primary computing platform. However, investors have questioned Meta’s huge investment in the Metaverse project. Investors were skeptical about the project’s return at a time when an advertising downturn weighed on Meta’s revenue growth.

In a separate report, Meta said the EU could boost economic opportunity by up to 489 billion euros ($538.3 billion) a year to 2035, or about 1.3%-2.4% of its total GDP.

Deloitte says the Metaverse will contribute between C$45.3 billion ($33.88 billion) and C$85.5 billion to Canada’s annual GDP by 2035.

Last year, Meta commissioned consulting firm Analysis Group to publish a report on the global economic impact. The report estimates that the popularity of the Metaverse will contribute $3.01 trillion to the global economy by 2031.

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In 2021, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg renamed the trillion-dollar company Meta. After much hype, Metaverse technology became the object of tech obsession and quickly won over investors. However, the lack of a coherent product vision ultimately led to the decline of the Metaverse. As the tech industry turns to the more promising new trend of generative artificial intelligence, the Metaverse is doomed.
big promise

Mark Zuckerberg once claimed that the Metaverse would be the future of the internet. When Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s name change, he used a cool video to promote a metaverse future in which people can seamlessly interact in virtual worlds: users can “make eye contact” and “feel like they’re together.” He claims that the metaverse can bring people an “immersive” experience.

These grand promises have given the Metaverse high expectations. Crowds began to hype this broad vision of the Internet, but the reality technology failed to deliver on this promise in its short lifespan. When interviewed in virtual reality, low-quality cartoon images of the host and Mark Zuckerberg gesticulate awkwardly at each other, in stark contrast to the futuristic vistas shown in Meta’s promotional video.

The Metaverse is also suffering from a serious identity crisis. A functional business needs a clear use case, target audience, and customer willingness to adopt the product to thrive. Mark Zuckerberg described the Metaverse as “a vision that spans many companies” and “the successor to the mobile internet,” but didn’t spell out the fundamental business problems that the Metaverse could solve. The concept of the Metaverse has been around for a long time, but Mark Zuckerberg’s actual product is just the virtual world Horizon Worlds, which also requires users to use extremely bulky Oculus headsets, which seems to have nothing to do with the product roadmap or real vision of the Metaverse. When Mark Zuckerberg claims that a billion people will use the Metaverse, all of which will cost a few hundred dollars, there is no way to explain what people will get in return for their cash, or why anyone would want to wear a clunky device to a low-quality event. cartoon concert.
Ambitious

In the months since Meta’s name change, it seems like every company has launched a Metaverse product, even though they don’t have a clue what it is or why they’re doing it.

What a technological “breakthrough” the Metaverse is for his company, the industry, and the world, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at Ignite 2021 Can’t be overemphasized. Roblox, an online gaming platform founded in 2004, went public amid the hype at a $41 billion valuation. The cryptocurrency industry has succeeded in convincing people that digital real estate in a virtual world will be the next frontier in real estate investing. Even Wal-Mart, Disney and other companies that seem to have nothing to do with technology have joined in.

Companies scrambling to enter the Metaverse space have led investors, consultants and analysts to raise their forecasts for Metaverse business growth. Market consultancy Gartner claims that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the virtual world will forever change the way we work. Global consultancy McKinsey predicts that the Metaverse could generate as much as “$5 trillion in value,” adding that some 95 percent of business leaders expect the Metaverse to “have a positive impact on their industry” within five to 10 years. Not to be outdone, Citi released a lengthy report declaring that the Metaverse will bring $13 trillion in business opportunities.
downfall

Despite all the hype, the Metaverse isn’t on a healthy path, after all every business idea or good market forecast is built on Mark Zuckerberg’s vague promises. When people actually got a chance to try it, no one really used the Metaverse.

Cryptocurrency-based Metaverse product Decentraland claims to be worth a “$1.3 billion ecosystem,” but only has around 38 daily active users. Decentraland denies this, saying it has 8,000 daily active users; a small fraction compared to many large online games. By October 2022, Meta’s Horizon Worlds platform will have fewer than 200,000 monthly active users, well below Meta’s goal of 500,000 by the end of 2022. According to reports, only about 9% of these users created game worlds that could attract 50 players. Reports say Horizon Worlds is so buggy that even Meta employees won’t use it.

With economic growth slowing and the buzz around generative artificial intelligence hitting, the Metaverse business is in serious trouble. Microsoft shut down its virtual office platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, fired 100 members of the “Industrial Metaverse team,” and made a series of layoffs to the HoloLens team. Disney and Walmart successively closed metaverse departments and cooperative projects in March this year.

Mark Zuckerberg and Meta also stopped supporting the Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg announced in March that Meta’s “biggest investment is advancing artificial intelligence and building it into every one of our products.” Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth (Andrew Bosworth) this year He and Mark Zuckerberg, along with Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer, now spend most of their time working on artificial intelligence, said in April. Even though Meta has burned more than $10 billion in research and development to achieve “Metaverse First”, it has now stopped even promoting the Metaverse to advertisers.
learn a lesson

While the idea of virtual worlds or online experiences may live on in some form, the metaverse is certainly dead. This should be seen as one of the most historic failures in the history of technology.

Mark Zuckerberg may not have had much interest in the Metaverse, since he never seemed to define it clearly, just tweaking Facebook’s name and clunky hardware products a little. It’s just a way for the company to boost its stock price, not a real vision of how humans will interact in the future. Mark Zuckerberg used his vast wealth and influence to get the tech industry and much of the American business community behind this half-baked idea.

It should also lead to serious reflection by the venture capital community, which is desperate to go after Mark Zuckerberg, pouring billions of dollars into the hype.

Mark Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an entire industry to follow his unrealistic obsession, and then killed another idea when it started to attract investor interest. With Mark Zuckerberg at the helm, Meta also has no future.

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It was previously reported that Meta has been using CPUs instead of GPUs when developing its AI business, causing the company to lag behind its competitors in the AI development process. Meta had planned to launch a custom chip in 2022, but then dropped it and ordered billions of dollars of Nvidia GPUs instead. Meta has since made several costly overhauls to support its core business, including a major project to upgrade its AI capabilities.

Mark Zuckerberg responded on a conference call on Wednesday: “At this point, we are no longer behind in building AI infrastructure. Instead, we now have the ability to lead work in this area at scale.” Meta said, from January to this year In March, AI recommendations led to a 24% increase in time spent on Instagram.

“I think a lot of Meta’s AI investments, similar to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, are going into advertiser clients,” said James Cordwell, an analyst at stockbroker Atlantic Equities. , we may not have seen the fruits of their labor in this regard, but it seems that they are able to use more advanced algorithms to maintain a certain level of targeted advertising.”

Mark Zuckerberg also said Meta saw “an opportunity to roll out AI agents to billions of people in a useful and meaningful way.” “I expect that once we nail down that experience, there will be a lot of interest in AI agents for business messaging and customer support. Over time, this will expand to our work on the Metaverse as well … where people will be able to more easily create avatars, objects, worlds, and the code that ties all of that together,” he said.

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