Meta

In 2021, the theme of the Metaverse was top of mind for tech investors, punctuated by Facebook's fall announcement of the name change to Meta. Today, tech investors have shifted their attention to AI, making the potential of the metaverse an afterthought. I believe, over the next decade, the substance of the metaverse will live up to the 2021 hype. That belief is based in part on rising investment and competition from TikTok and Apple to enable that future.

Over the last six years, we’ve made a habit of offering a few predictions for the year ahead. Here’s what we’re anticipating for 2023: We believe that FAANG will outperform the S&P in 2023. In 2022, the S&P 500 is…

Meta Connect 2022 offered a clear roadmap of the company’s go-to-market metaverse vision. That vision is a departure from Meta’s roots in consumer-first social products and is anchored in the future of work. Targeting the enterprise is an advantageous approach…

Buried in the vortex of topics around Meta’s September quarterly report is one core question. Can the platform successfully shift engagement and monetization away from Stories and toward Reels? Answering this question is more important than understanding the slowdown in…

From Doug’s blog, The Deload: The current inflationary environment has prompted tech to rightsize headcount with over 60,000 tech employees being laid off in the past year. While sad for the employees, it’s right for the long-term viability of companies and…

Meta could bring NFTs to the masses via Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned during his speech at SXSW that Instagram plans to integrate NFTs in the coming months. With over 1BN MAUs, Instagram would dwarf existing players like OpenSea (1MN) and…

Tesla raises its prices by 5-10% in part due to the high price of nickel. While this past week has included two price hikes for the company, there’s a likelihood these prices will come down again. The most recent upgrades…

Over the past month, we’ve discussed tech’s role in modern warfare — it’s a dynamic that continues to evolve. Most recently, Meta announced that they will allow expressions of violence toward the Russian invasion. This is notable as it is…

Takeaways: There were reports that TSLA has plans to increase its China production from 1.1M to 2M vehicles/year. As a point of comparison, VW expected to be able to produce 1M EVs in China in 2023. Bottom line is: China is…

Gene and Doug discuss: How a global launch of Facebook Reels will further the company’s aim to rival TikTok. While TikTok has a greater pool of content creators, Facebook better understands its users’ network of friends which could be an…

Gene and Doug discuss: Google is implementing its Privacy Sandbox for Android OS, and we believe it will be more advertiser-friendly than IDFA. While some have compared Google’s changes to that of Apple, it seems that Google is allowing for…

Gene and Doug discuss: Where there’s massive reach, there’s massive ad opportunity. Amazon increases its ad spend to $31B — which is larger than the ad revenue of Snap, Pinterest and Microsoft combined. Facebook launches its news aggregation service to…