Meta Platforms, the social media company owned by Mark Zuckerberg, saw its value decrease by $230 billion from Feb. 2 to Feb. 3, 2022, signifying the largest drop in market history.
The tech giant has been one of the largest and most valuable companies in the U.S. for years, with a market cap of over $1 trillion as recently as September 2021. Meta’s market cap currently sits at $589.41 billion, holding on as the ninth most valuable company in the world.
While seemingly an ever-growing and undying set of social media platforms and other services, Meta’s primary application, Facebook, saw its first-ever drop in daily active users, from 1.93 down to 1.929 billion.
In the past, Facebook has survived its fair share of controversies and continued to serve as the world’s largest social media platform. Facebook and Instagram, another of Meta’s primary platforms, both face significant competition from newer apps like TikTok.
Meta has not announced how they plan to address increased competition or changing demographics.
Additionally, Meta is struggling to adapt their advertising revenue streams to changing security and privacy policies on the devices that its users sign in from. Apple’s iOS 14.5 allows users to block ad tracking, crippling Facebook’s ability to extract profit from hyper-personalized and targeted advertising.
Facebook announced a predicted $10 billion decrease in advertising revenue in the coming year.
Google, following quickly in Apple’s footsteps, announced its new Privacy Sandbox for android phones that it says will “limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers.” Facebook has not announced how it predicts Google’s changes will affect their revenue.
Changing privacy technologies and user demands are changing the ways that social media platforms are able to advertise to their users and sell user data to other companies. Platforms will have to continue to adapt and change to survive and grow.
The future of Meta is less certain now than it was only a few months ago. Consumers will soon get to see if the Metaverse and Meta’s push to integrate virtual and augmented reality experiences into everyday life are enough to keep the company alive for decades to come.
