Meta, which last year earned US$117 billion in revenues, is as close to an icon of digital technology as you can get. With Google, it is one of two dominant advertising-based platforms in the world. Amazon, which raked in US$31 billion in ad revenues last year, is a distant third.
Last June, the social media giant then known as Facebook became only the sixth company in the world — behind iPhone maker Apple Inc, software powerhouse Microsoft, search supremo Google’s owner Alphabet Inc, e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com and Saudi Arabian oil firm Saudi Aramco — to surpass a market value of US$1 trillion ($1.35 trillion). Its market value peaked at US$ 1.1 trillion on Sept 1.
Despite a hard pivot, tens of billions in R&D on a virtual network focused on social connection called metaverse, US$19 billion in stock buybacks, a name change to Meta Platform and an aggressive PR campaign, it has been downhill ever since. On Feb 3, after it guided slower earnings and a plunge in revenue growth, Meta’s shares fell 26.4%, wiping out US$237 billion — the largest ever single-day drop in market value for a listed company on earth. They have fallen over 40% from the peak and the company is now valued at just US$612 billion.
