Now it seems that Meta is willing to abandon his old name to tie the metaverse to himself, more like a "left and right him".
In early February, Meta (formerly Facebook) announced its fourth quarter 2021 earnings report, and due to unsatisfactory performance, Meta's stock price plunged 26% at the end of the day, the largest one-day decline in 10 years of listing.
"Words" are a strong posture in the face of the metaverse, avoiding the social side that once shaped the company but is now exhausted. The metaverse is not seen in the financial report, and the weakness of Meta cannot be hidden, and even vaguely reminiscent of the decline of Yahoo more than a decade ago.
Or rather, it's TikTok that's avoided.
In recent years, TikTok's rapid speed in downloads and user activity has made the sluggish Facebook stab in the back, Zuckerberg helplessly admitted that TikTok's competitive pressure on Facebook is one of the reasons why the financial report is less than expected. Half a month after the earnings report, Meta decided to open up the short video feature Reels to all Facebook users around the world, and Zuckerberg hoped to beat TikTok with another TikTok.
Source: Meta's sexy vision, bone-sensitive stock price
On February 7, Meta (FB. US) released the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 financial report, let's first take a look at where the first financial report of Facebook's renaming Meta "collapse" is.
According to the earnings report, Meta's revenue in the fourth quarter of last year was $33.67 billion, slightly higher than analysts' expectations of $33.4 billion. But the 20% year-over-year increase in revenue is significantly lower than the 47.6%, 55.6% and 35% increases in the first three quarters of fiscal 2021.
In terms of net profit, Meta did not hold the rally and fell for the first time since the second quarter of 2019. Its net profit in the fourth quarter was $10.29 billion, down 8% year-on-year. EPS was $3.67, down 5% year-over-year and well below market expectations of 2%.
Meta2021Q4 Financial Report
Hanging over Meta's revenue outlook is that users are leaving Facebook.
From the third quarter to the fourth quarter, Meta's social matrix (including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger and other services) daily active users of 2.82 billion people, an increase of 8% over the same period last year, the overall rally, the distribution of active users in each product has not changed substantially, nearly 2 billion daily active users still come from Facebook, and therefore, The sudden downturn in Facebook's user performance has become a focus of concern.
In addition, the change in the iOS privacy policy is another dark cloud above Meta's head.
The iOS 14.5 system was released last April, and the new privacy regulations including app tracking transparency and privacy features have really landed with this version update. After the implementation of the new regulations, users will receive a query of "whether to allow the APP to read user data" when opening the application for the first time, which means that technology companies that previously relied on user data information for personalized advertising push will not be able to accurately feed ads to users, which will have a huge impact on The advertising business that Meta accounts for more than 90% of the total revenue.
Facebook CHIEF Operating Officer Cheryl said in the earnings briefing that the tightening of the iOS privacy policy "means that the accuracy of our ads targeting users has decreased, the cost of customer acquisition has increased, and it has become more difficult to measure the effectiveness of ads, which has led to a decline in The attractiveness of Meta to advertisers" has been reduced.
Image source: Appleinsider
As users around the world place more emphasis on privacy data security, the decline in meta-advertising revenue prospects is difficult to reverse. In this year of change, Zuckerberg opened the curtain on Meta's transformation of the metacosm, but from The data disclosure of Meta's first metacosm division, this new business is still in the starting stage of increasing investment, continuing the trend of four consecutive quarters of losses widening month-on-month, and it is still far from picking up the girder.
Metacosmity keeps Meta a cutting-edge, sexy tech company, but capital markets aren't buying that vision, and the evaporated $200 billion means that social networking is still Meta's base.
In the face of bone stock prices, Meta eventually needs to face its own social dilemma. Zuckerberg admitted at the earnings conference that the ferocity of TikTok is one of the reasons for the decline in stock prices.
Meta will turn the tide on Reels.
TikTok and Reels, West and East
Reels, which has been online on Instagram since August 2020, is nothing new.
When the user enters the Instagram Stories page, a side-by-side "Reels" portal will appear, reels allow users to shoot or upload 3-15 seconds of video footage, and provide background music, filters and various graphic elements during the editing process. In terms of rendering effect, the video relies on the operation of sliding up and down to browse, the title and text parts of the video are placed at the bottom of the screen, and the "Like", "Comment" and "Share" buttons are placed vertically on the right side.
Image source: Entrepreneur
It's like a remake of TikTok.
Copying the core gameplay and then reversing the user's mind with a huge user base disk is Zuckerberg's previous trick to consolidate his social landscape, Instagram Stories itself is a plagiarism product of Snapchat Stories, meta also achieved the containment of Snapchat. From this point of view, meta-meta of the metaverse still retains its own tradition.
In fact, this is not the first time That Meta has tried to defeat TikTok by means of plagiarism.
After the unveiling of Meta's new logo, the near-"infinity" pattern, many people felt that this logo was familiar. If you try to rotate Meta's icon 100 degrees counterclockwise and change the base color, you will find that it is very similar to Lasso, another social product launched by Meta in the Facebook era.
——A TikTok clone that is completely independent of the current Meta social products, and the more powerful but has been shut down.
In June 2018, Facebook added lip sync live to its existing live streaming feature. Five months later, Lip Sync Live broke away from Facebook and became a short video social product called Lasso. Like TikTok, Lasso is led by a recommendation algorithm that allows users to shoot videos up to 15 seconds in length and offers a selectable music library. This is considered to be a direct attempt by Meta to confront TikTok after Facebook was gradually abandoned by young people.
图源：That's
After Lasso's release, Meta has been channeling the foreman through Facebook and Instagram. The U.S. region became the first region for Lasso to go online, and has since entered Colombia, Mexico and other markets. But the product, which Zuckerberg pinned high hopes on, did not make a splash, and according to Sensor Tower, Lasso's total number of downloads since its launch was only 300,000.
The failure of this product seems to have been doomed in the initial chaos, the team leader Brady Wirth left the team to switch to Netflix 4 days after the product was launched, and Lasso, which added Hindi to the language, has not yet waited to enter the Indian market, and hastily announced its closure two years after the launch.
Reels' stature soared, and Meta bet heavily on the treasure
At the one-hour earnings session, Reels was mentioned 40 times by executives and analysts, equivalent to one mention per 1.5mins. For comparison, the Metaverse is "only mentioned" 15 times.
Meta has elevated Reels to an unprecedented priority, and this elevation to status is well documented.
At first, Reels as an in-app feature has always been embedded in Instagram, which can still be regarded as a reserved experimental attempt to some extent, after all, Meta's most concentrated user group is not in Instagram, but as Facebook and Instagram, the proportion of browsing video content in the user's time has gradually increased, Reels has played an increasingly important role in it.
Meta announced last quarter that its internal focus is shifting further towards young people. Zuckerberg also said that "Meta expects Instagram and Facebook to tilt further towards video in the future, with Reels becoming a more central part of the experience.". By the quarter, video content was on Facebook and Instagram and accounted for more than half of the user's time. Zuckerberg said at the earnings conference that Reels is currently Meta's fastest-growing form of content and is already the biggest contributor to Instagram engagement growth.
Meta's opening of Reels to all Facebook users worldwide at this time is expected. The tilt of the resources provided by Meta and Reels Open can also clearly feel the determination of this replay.
First of all, the video length of Facebook Reels has been extended to 60 seconds and will be available to Facebook users in more than 150 countries in the future. In addition, in order to stimulate more content creators to come in, the launch of Facebook Reels is accompanied by a very tempting incentive mechanism.
Facebook Reels was confirmed to be included in Meta's previous $1 billion incentive program for Facebook and Instagram, and this time Meta introduced a monthly incentive of up to $35,000 for Facebook Reels to reward quality content creators on Reels, and the bonuses are linked to the number of views of works on Reels.
Image source: Meta official website
Meta also optimized Facebook Reels in terms of ad sharing mechanism. Facebook Reels will try to introduce two new forms of advertising, with banner ads appearing at the bottom of Reels' page in a translucent form, and another static image ad that can be placed anywhere on the screen at the discretion of the content creator. Through a more flexible advertising mechanism, Reels will provide more revenue potential for content creators within the ecosystem.
In addition, Facebook Reels content creators in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico will automatically join Meta's existing insertion ad sharing program, with creators in more regions being included in mid-March. Another "Star" rewards program will also be tested on Facebook Reels in the coming weeks, where viewers can purchase stars while watching short videos and forward them to the video authors, whose stars will be converted into tipping revenue for content creators.
And last November, Instagram launched a reels content creator incentive program called Reels Surprise, which will reward up to $10,000 a week to 150 U.S. creators to produce "inspiring, fun" short videos;
Adam Moserry, head of Instagram, has previously publicly stated that the platform will "redouble its investment" in the video field in the future, focusing on Reels in 2022.
A series of campaign plans from last year to the present have become the foreshadowing of Reels' landing on Facebook. If you consider the continuous impact of the iOS Privacy New Deal on Meta's revenue growth, Meta needs to use Reels to retain users, and it is also urgent to reflect its ability and determination in the field of short video to seize the share of short video advertising and retain advertisers.
The market is still on the sidelines
But whether the bet will work on Reels is still unknown.
Meta's focus shifts from Reels to Lasso and back to Reels, seemingly following a repetitive path. Both are very similar to TikTok, and previous failed attempts have proved that Facebook's boost is no longer enough to be a decisive chip for Reels to bring down TikTok.
Capital markets have not reacted positively to Meta's social action.
On February 22, Meta said that it would open Reels to all Facebook users around the world in the future, which did not boost market confidence, and Meta shares continued to fall by 2% that day.
Source: cnbeta
In fact, TikTok is facing a global siege far more than Just Meta, YouTube said on last year's second-quarter earnings call that its embedded short video module Shorts has been viewed more than 15 billion times a day around the world; Snapchat also launched a short video product spotlight with up to 60 seconds of material at the end of 2020, which has exceeded 100 million monthly active users within two months of launch.
These new adversaries in the short video space cannot currently threaten TikTok, but they are the enemies that Reels has to face.
Embarrassingly, Meta, which has lost the lead in several confrontations, has no better way to deal with it than to continue to dive into Facebook and Instagram. The continued decline in the stock price has made Zuckerberg's advocacy of Reels fall into an embarrassment.
The outside world is waiting for Meta's next answer sheet, which will determine whether "trust Reels" is a deliberate choice at this time, or just a no-way solution.
Header image from: Getty Images