Someone asked me what I would do if I were in charge of Meta.
Make Nice!
First…..
I would not have let the Apple relationship slide so far down. When Apple asked for a share of Facebook’s ad revenue, I would have given that to them and figured out a plan to be less dependent in the long run. Apple privacy changes probably wouldn’t have been made if Facebook had paid up. Apple started advocating the privacy updates as a PR campaign. Google is paying Apple $15B in 2021 alone (almost 6% of their revenue) to be their default search engine. That’s an insane amount of money borderline extortion but it’s a smart business decision. The alternative would have cost Google way more than $15B a year. In the meantime, Google is building out Android, Chrome and bought the phone division of HTC to rival Apple. Look, Apple and Google are direct competitors on smart phones but they figure out a way to work together. But here we are. Facebook got itself into a really bad situation by ignoring Apple. If I were in charge today, my top priority would be to mend relationships with Apple by paying them some money in exchange for much better ad signals and a less prominent “Ask App Not To Track” button. I am sure the ransom paid to Apple will have a very positive ROI.
o
On the other hand!
You need to pivot , no social media company has lasted as long as facebook, and the current climate makes M&A ,very , very hard!
People underestimated the actual ad value social media would have, it’s not crazy the metaverse would have this as well. You have to do your work to prove this of course.
On the Other Other Hand!
Is Mark doing the metaverse ploy to help his legacy more than his company? He won’t make gobs of money, but he will be very very cool if this suceeds!
Worth a big shot!
