The Facebook Drop - bring a bucket

Inside the Meta war room, thousands of execs in a global all-hands. Practically everybody in the company from associate level up has been ordered to stop what they are working on.

They assemble in a Metaverse meeting room in order to workshop the $230 billion hole in their share price. It’s the largest share price drop in recorded history.

All over the world, 30,000 employees are concerned about their futures. Meanwhile, alone in his mansion on a walled off Pacific island, a young social media baron grieves for the loss of his power.

He stretches on the mat in corpse pose, wearing ivory white VR glasses, lurking in god mode, observing thousands of meetings at once. All-powerful AI software listens to every meeting underway in order to collect and bundle data points from every single key word spoken.

It connects every single shred of evidence to construct a temple of oracular data where the company leadership will go to pray for a redemption.

With $230bn vaporized, it's as if a warehouse of financial leverage explodes. The shockwave radiates outwards.

Hold a bucket ready for the voltage drop

Meta SWOT

In a sleepy European capital, someone with a masters in business studies proposes a SWOT analysis. This will help to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the Facebook brand at this moment in time.

Objective

Operation Save Face(book)
Support share price
Restore revenue growth with a telecoms' merge

Problem

Revenue is down
Churn is up

Strength

Combined revenues TELCO + Meta = PROFIT
Billing relationship plus user profiles - extract value from identity
Leverage existing businesses in brand partnerships
Add value with Meta brand
The telco knows churn

Weakness

Citizen Zucks floating up there in Elon Musk's inflatable space hotel literally talking about how he's going to invent an alternate reality, he's got 'nuff coin. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people drop the existing Facebook brand experience and walk off, never to return. Meta is a rich man's reverie, a meta-rosebud, with no impact on the market. Facebook is over.

Opportunity

Facebook Mobile
Facebook handsets for grandma
"Look ma, sms with pictures"
Disney Instagram Experience for Kids
Facebook Health apps
Facebook Merch - eg branded sunglasses, Facebook makeup
AI for customer care
Meta Smartphones/high end brand experience

Threats

Facebook not perceived as value-added service
Core value of privacy is absent
Meta is neither a value nor a venue
Apple is the gatekeeper
Facebook was never the experience

Community as commodity

Facebook is a commodity. It's like, one of the internets. It's as basic as bread and beer and can easily be replaced. Nobody really values the Facebook brand experience itself.

When your entire community ups and moves from one platform to the next, you have an elastic demand curve. It can be easily replaced because it doesn't have the necessary lifestyle brand image to make it valuable in itself.

#Facebook #meta #socialmedia https://t.co/jWZ6BAWdBi
— ☠ (@ampmob) February 4, 2022

Puerile entertainments

There's no magic formula at work in Facebook. It's puerile entertainment. User generated content, it doesn't need to obey laws about speech or be subject to copyright law in order to function.

Now that has been curtailed by competitive forces, it's an expensive flop. Under normal circumstances, this would cost the CEO his job. This one is unsackable, though, because he owns most of the company.

No regulators have even touched this beast. Meanwhile the population marches through the capital buildings brimming with community regalia like walking memes. They group up on Facebook and create violent conservative movements.

Privacy vindicated

Damned Apple. They vindicate privacy as a consumer value. It’s a new wrinkle. Apple sells privacy back to the same people it takes it away from, pumping it up as a service.

The take away being, all privacy needs to win, is a helping hand. Now you know, it's not just for show.

The CEO, spreadeagled, digs his fingers into the tatami mat he lies upon. Not only does the Apple strategy stop them functioning as advertisers, it’s a killer blow.

A five finger death punch that allows you to think you can walk away after it's dealt, only to collapse a few steps later with a stopped heart.

The playground for poors is TikTok. They vote with their eyeballs. Even gramps' YouTube channel could soon take down Facebook’s whole sorry ass. There is panic on the mat.

The CEO sits up and whips off his VR headset, hurling it across the gym where it smashes off the picture window overlooking the private jetty.

Urgently and unironically, he calls his assistant. “Siri, search for strategic telco partners for Meta.”

Searching ...

Siri, take a memo: Sell off what's left of Facebook and cash out. Sell it to Wei-bo. If that's a nope, Verizon. Hell, Apple might even buy the burned out hulk of Facebook, switch the privacy button off again and let the till ring. Cha-ching.

Imma fly to the moon with the Meta rump and the techbros. Done with Facebook!