Communications of the ACM
How Meta Is Monetizing the Decline of Facebook
Facebook is faltering a bit, but still accounts for most of Meta’s billions of dollars in advertising sales.
Credit: Intelligencer/Getty Images
What's going on with Meta these days? It's simple, really. Instagram is TikTok but also Snapchat. Threads is Twitter but also Instagram. Facebook is Craigslist but also Reddit. Messenger is now WhatsApp. And WhatsApp is the new Facebook — which means it's the future of the company.
This all-important last point comes from no less an authority than Mark Zuckerberg. Here he is speaking to the New York Times:
Now WhatsApp has become increasingly crucial to Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and other apps. More than half of Americans ages 18 to 35 who own a cell phone have installed WhatsApp, according to the company's studies, making it one of Meta's fastest-growing services in its most mature market. Ads on Facebook and Instagram that push users to WhatsApp and its sister messaging service, Messenger, are also growing so rapidly that they may reach $10 billion in revenue this year, the company recently said. "If you're envisioning what will be the private social platform of the future, starting from scratch, I think it would basically look like WhatsApp," Mr. Zuckerberg, 39, said in a recent interview.
Meta continues to spend lots of money on VR and AI, two relatively young money-pit industries it hopes one day to dominate, but the company still relies on its core products for the bulk of its revenues and almost all of its profits.
From New York Magazine
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