Facebook's Meta Rebranding Takes a Year, and FTX CEO Examines Zuckerberg's 'Distracting' Decision
On October 28, Facebook's rebranding to Meta, aimed at establishing the company's stronghold in the Web3 sector, marked a year. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), CEO of the FTX crypto exchange, seized the opportunity to share his thoughts on Facebook's massive overhaul. The crypto tycoon has claimed that Meta's growth has stalled since the rebranding because the social networking giant "has no more room to grow." SBF claims that Meta's attempt to distract the public from its bad reputation for data collection with the new name did not work as planned.
According to SBF, who dissected Mark Zuckerberg's rebranding decision, Facebook wanted to churn billions by projecting itself as a 'vague, unclear, and futuristic enough' space.
According to Meta's earnings reports, however, it appears that Zuckerberg's alleged plan, as detailed by SBF, backfired spectacularly.
Between April and June of this year, Meta's metaverse section lost a whopping $2.81 billion (roughly Rs. 22,410 crore), according to Zuckerberg, during Meta's Q2 earnings call on July 27. This Meta division is known as 'Facebook Reality Labs' (FRL).
Meta's FRL generated $452 million (roughly Rs. 3,604 crore) in the second quarter of 2022, a 35% decrease from the previous quarter.
In the third quarter of this year, the top ten metaverse projects experienced an 80% drop. According to a report published earlier this month by DappRadar, Metaverse trading volume fell 91.61 percent to $90 million (roughly Rs. 740 crore) in the third quarter of 2023.
This slump in the metaverse market impacted Meta's revenues as well.
Meta, on the other hand, intends to continue its research in the metaverse. It recently partnered with digital fashion company DressX to enable users across its platforms to purchase and wear digital apparel on avatars.
The social media behemoth is also planning to open a "metaverse academy" in France.
According to a Forkast report, the company expects overall operating expenses related to its metaverse expedition to rise by 14% in 2023.