Meta – EarthyRealist.com

Facebook Loses Users Plummeting $200BN: CEO Zuckerberg Blames TikTok

Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history. CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook’s decline in users is likely due to the boom in popularity of the competitor platform TikTok.

Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history in the final quarter of 2021, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes was caused by the TikTok boom.

The social media giant’s devastating earnings report on Wednesday sent Facebook shares plunging more than 20 percent, wiping more than $200 billion off the company’s market cap and erasing $29 billion from Zuckerberg’s net worth.

Facebook reported a drop of nearly 500,000 in daily logins during the last three months of 2021.

‘People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,’ Zuckerberg said during an earnings call Wednesday, according to the Washington Post.

Zuckerberg reiterated that Meta – the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – is pushing hard to develop its short-form video Reels in an effort to compete with TikTok.

‘This is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term,’ he added.

Facebook, which now only has 1.93 billion users logging in each day, also saw its shares plunged more than 20 percent in extended trading on Wednesday after unexpectedly heavy spending on its Metaverse project led to a rare decline in its fourth quarter profit.

Meta saw its stock fall 22.6 percent to $249.90 in after-hours trading, wiping about $200 billion off the company’s market value.

The company heavily invested in its Reality Labs segment – which includes its virtual reality headsets and augmented reality technology – during the final quarter of 2021, accounting for much of the profit decline.

Zuckerberg, who is worth approximately $107 billion, held more than 398 million shares of Meta at the end of 2020, according to Investopedia. Based on his reported holdings, the CEO personally experienced a more than $29 billion loss when the company’s stock fell Wednesday.

Las Vegas Online Group Seeks Artists & Businesses: Increase Your Global Visability

Las Vegas Arts & Handmade Businesses is an online community found under the social network company Meta. The group features local artists, designers and hand fabricated business owners. But you don’t have to be a local to join, if you are one of the many from around the world who travels to the city this is a great way to stay updated on the latest trends, events, and unique finds.

Learn Business Skills
Promote Your Company
Track The Latest Trends

Join On Today

Crowdfunding Platform Kickstarter Moving To Blockchain

For more than a decade, Kickstarter PBC has convinced the public to pay people to follow through on their ideas to build a gadget, make a film or create a piece of art. It was, in some ways, a harbinger of today’s digital economy built around cryptocurrencies, decentralized organizations and NFT art.

On Wednesday, Kickstarter plans to unveil a project that will merge the two worlds. It’s hatching a standalone company to build a crowdfunding system much like Kickstarter’s but based on blockchain technology. When it’s ready, Kickstarter will switch its own website to the new infrastructure, and the new company will make the tools available for anyone to create a competing crowdfunding site.

The new company does not yet have a name. Development is slated to begin in the first quarter of next year, and Kickstarter expects to transition its site to the new protocol sometime in 2022. The change will take place entirely behind the scenes and shouldn’t affect how people use the site, the New York-based company said.

It’s a large, technical undertaking. Embarking on the project was a “big decision,” said co-founder Perry Chen, but it was ultimately an easy one to make because it fits with Kickstarter’s mission, which is “to help bring creative projects to life.”

Chen started Kickstarter with a pair of art-loving friends in 2009, and it was a near-instant hit with cash-strapped go-getters and eventually with celebrities and big companies looking to test consumer demand. The Peloton stationary bike started with a Kickstarter campaign ($307,332 raised), and so did the Oculus VR headset ($2.4 million). Kickstarter helped finance new records from Amanda Palmer ($1.2 million) and the pop group TLC ($430,000) and revived cult classic TV shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 ($5.8 million) and Veronica Mars ($5.7 million).