From: Glenn Petersen | 9/1/2023 7:52:24 PM | | | | Meta May Allow Instagram and Facebook Users in Europe to Pay to Avoid Ads
The subscription plan is a response to European Union policies and court rulings to restrict Meta’s data-collection practices.
By Mike Isaac and Adam Satariano Mike Isaac reports on Meta and Silicon Valley from San Francisco. Adam Satariano reports on European technology and policy from London. New York Times Sept. 1, 2023 Updated 2:07 p.m. ET

Meta is considering a paid subscription service for Instagram and Facebook users in Europe. Credit...Artur Widak, Getty Images -------------------------------------
Meta is considering paid versions of Facebook and Instagram that would have no advertising for users in the European Union, three people with knowledge of the company’s plans said, a response to regulatory scrutiny and a sign that how people experience technology in the United States and Europe may diverge because of government policy.
Those who pay for Facebook and Instagram subscriptions would not see ads in the apps, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are confidential. That may help Meta fend off privacy concerns and other scrutiny from E.U. regulators by giving users an alternative to the company’s ad-based services, which rely on analyzing people’s data, the people said.
Meta would also continue to offer free versions of Facebook and Instagram with ads in the European Union, the people said. It is unclear how much the paid versions of the apps would cost or when the company might roll them out.
A Meta spokesman declined to comment.
For nearly 20 years, Meta’s core business has centered on offering free social networking services to users and selling advertising to companies that want to reach that audience. Providing a paid tier would be one of the most tangible examples to date of how companies are having to redesign products to comply with data privacy rules and other government policies, particularly in Europe.
In July, the European Union’s highest court effectively barred Meta from combining data collected about users across its platforms — including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — as well as from outside websites and apps, unless it received explicit consent from users. In January, the company was also fined 390 million euros by Irish regulators for forcing users to accept personalized ads as a condition of using Facebook.
The rulings stemmed from the 2018 enactment of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R., which was landmark legislation to protect people’s online data.
Meta’s openness to creating paid subscriptions shows how those living in the European Union, which comprises 27 countries and roughly 450 million people, may begin to see different versions of consumer technology products because of new laws, regulations and court rulings.
In recent weeks, as a new E.U. law called the Digital Services Act took effect to stem the flow of illicit content online, TikTok and Instagram users in the region have also been able to block personal data from being used to generate their social media feeds. Snapchat and Meta have stopped marketers from targeting teenagers ages 13 to 17 in Europe with personalized ads.
By next year, another E.U. tech-focused law, the Digital Markets Act, will take effect. That is set to force big tech platforms to change certain business practices to encourage competition and will have wide-ranging impacts, with Apple expected to allow users in the European Union to download alternatives to the App Store on iPhones and iPads for the first time.
“This shows that tech companies are complying with the E.U.’s digital regulations, suggesting that they remain beholden to governments and not the other way around,” said Anu Bradford, a Columbia University law professor and the author of “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology.”
Meta, which also owns Messenger, has faced particular scrutiny from E.U. regulators. In May, the bloc fined the Silicon Valley company €1.2 billion for violating its privacy laws by sending data on European citizens back to U.S. servers for the purposes of improving the company’s advertising technology. Meta has appealed the ruling.
Meta has been fined for other violations of G.D.P.R., including a €265 million fine for a 2021 data leak. Irish regulators have also levied fines of €225 million over violations in a case involving WhatsApp, and another €17 million over a data leak.
Some Meta insiders believe that giving users the choice of opting out of an ad-based service while still having access to a paid version of Facebook or Instagram could alleviate some European regulators’ concerns, two of the people said. Even if few people choose the paid version, making such an option available could serve Meta’s interests in the region, they said.
Meta has not released its new app Threads, which is a rival to X, formerly known as Twitter, in Europe because of regulatory concerns.
Europe is the second most lucrative region for Meta after North America. Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, said in April that advertising in the European Union accounted for 10 percent of the company’s overall business. Meta’s revenue totaled nearly $117 billion last year.
Beyond its European challenges, Meta is trying to rejuvenate its business after global economic jitters hampered ad sales growth. It is also still pushing its vision of the immersive digital world of the metaverse, an expensive project championed by Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, which is still in its earliest days. And executives are focusing on developing artificial intelligence technologies and incorporating them into more of Meta’s products.
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Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent and the author of “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” a best-selling book on the dramatic rise and fall of the ride-hailing company. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley, and is based in San Francisco. More about Mike Isaac
Adam Satariano is a technology correspondent based in Europe, where his work focuses on digital policy and the intersection of technology and world affairs. More about Adam Satariano
Meta May Offer Ad-Free Subscriptions for Instagram and Facebook in the E.U. - The New York Times (nytimes.com) |
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From: Glenn Petersen | 9/11/2023 8:46:57 PM | | | | Meta Is Developing a New, More Powerful AI System as Technology Race Escalates
Parent of Facebook and Instagram wants artificial-intelligence system to be as capable as OpenAI’s most advanced model
By Deepa Seetharaman and Tom Dotan Wall Street Journal Sept. 10, 2023 5:01 pm ET

Meta expects to start training the new AI system, known as a large language model, in early 2024. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS ---------------------------------
Meta Platforms is setting its sights on OpenAI.
The parent of Facebook and Instagram is working on a new artificial-intelligence system intended to be as powerful as the most advanced model offered by OpenAI, the Microsoft -backed startup that created ChatGPT, according to people familiar with the matter. Meta aims for its new AI model, which it hopes to be ready next year, to be several times more powerful than the one it released just two months ago, dubbed Llama 2.
The planned system, details of which could still change, would help other companies to build services that produce sophisticated text, analysis and other output. It is the work of a group formed early this year by Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to accelerate development of so-called generative AI tools that can produce humanlike expressions. Meta expects to start training the new AI system, known as a large language model, in early 2024, some of the people said.
\Plans for the new model, which haven’t previously been reported, are part of Zuckerberg’s effort to assert Meta as a major force in the AI world after it fell behind rivals. Competition in the area has sharply intensified this year, spawning divergent views on everything from which business models are best to how the technology should be regulated.
The company is currently building up the data centers necessary for the job and acquiring more H100s, the most advanced of the Nvidia chips used for such AI training. While Meta joined with Microsoft to make Llama 2 available on Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform Azure, it plans to train the new model on its own infrastructure, some of the people said.
Zuckerushing for the new model, like Meta’s earlier AI offerings, to be open-sourced and thereforberg is pble freee availa for companies to build AI-powered tools.

Llama 2 was released in July. / PHOTO: ANDRE M. CHANG/ZUMA PRESS ---------------------------------- \ Zuckerberg will be among a group of top tech executives attending a summit organized by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Wednesday to discuss how to handle AI. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, and Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, will also be attending.
The model under development may not close the gap with Meta’s competitors.
Meta hopes it will be roughly as capable as GPT-4, which OpenAI launched in March. GPT-4 underpins OpenAI’s moneymaking initiatives such as the recently launched ChatGPT for Business tool, and the company has been courting others to build on top of the technology as it tries to cover the enormous costs for advanced AI models. Meta’s new model also likely would come out after the expected debut of Gemini, an advanced large language model being built by Google.
Meta’s open-sourced approach has certain advantages. Zuckerberg has championed open-source AI models, which are popular for their lower cost and adaptability.
There also are potential downsides to an open-source model of the power Meta aspires to, say some legal specialists. These include increased risks around use of potentially copyright-protected information and broader access to a tool whose enhanced strength can be used to generate and spread disinformation or other bad actions.
Meta’s lawyers have raised some of these concerns as part of their review of the company’s plans.
“You can’t easily predict what the system would do or its vulnerabilities—what some open source AI systems offer is a limited degree of transparency, reusability and extensibility,” said Sarah West, a former adviser to the Federal Trade Commission who is now managing director of the AI Now Institute, a research institute that has raised concerns about big companies’ control over AI.
Large language models generally get more powerful when trained on more data. The most powerful version of the Llama 2 model that Meta announced in July was trained on 70 billion parameters, a term for the variables in an AI system that is used to measure size. OpenAI hasn’t disclosed the size of GPT-4, but it is estimated to be roughly 20 times that size, at 1.5 trillion parameters. Some AI experts say there could be other methods to achieve GPT-4’s power without necessarily approaching its size.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at deepa.seetharaman@wsj.com and Tom Dotan at tom.dotan@wsj.com
Meta Is Developing a New, More Powerful AI System as Technology Race Escalates - WSJ (archive.ph) |
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From: Julius Wong | 9/24/2023 9:47:40 AM | | | | META Connect preview:
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) will hold its Meta Connect live event on September 27-28.
The tech company will give consumers a preview of the Meta Quest 3 VR headset, which was formerly known as the Oculus Quest 3. Indications are that a new Qualcomm ( QCOM) Snapdragon chip will make the Quest 3 headset the company's most powerful ever and improve the highest resolution display by close to 30%. The Quest 3 is expected to arrive with redesigned Touch Plus controllers and hand-tracking support.
Meta Platforms is also expected to update on its AI plans. During the company's Q2 earnings, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was building a number of new AI-powered products, some of which could act as assistants, coaches, and interact with businesses. The Meta Connect AI reveals could also include a formal announcement of new AI chatbots with different personalities, details around Meta's GenAI Agent opportunity, and use cases for Meta's GenAI Ad Tools & Features.
While shares of Meta Platforms ( META) turned lower during the Meta Connect event last year, several analysts have called it potential positive share price catalyst this time around the metaverse block. |
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From: Glenn Petersen | 9/29/2023 4:57:36 AM | | | | Meta introduces ChatGPT competitor, AI tools amid industry arms race
Meta AI will allow users to search WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram using artificial intelligence
By Naomi Nix The Washington Post Updated September 27, 2023 at 3:11 p.m. EDT| Published September 27, 2023 at 2:15 p.m. EDT
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Meta on Wednesday launched a conversational chatbot that will allow users to search its social media networks using artificial intelligence — an attempt to compete with OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT amid an industry-wide boom in generative AI.
Meta said the conversational assistant, Meta AI — which will populate WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram — relies on one of its large language models and a partnership with Microsoft’s search engine Bing. The company is also launching AI-backed photo creation tools and 28 AI-powered chatbots, played by celebrities and cultural icons such as Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and Naomi Osaka.
“Meta AI is your basic assistant that you can talk to like a person,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a keynote address at the company’s Connect developers conference.
Meta has long been a powerhouse of artificial intelligence research. Behind the scenes, the technology powers countless features: from the algorithms that surface viral content on its social networks to the systems that flag toxic content. But as Google and OpenAI have pushed out advanced chatbots and other stand-alone AI-products, Meta appeared to be falling behind.
“They haven’t really gotten credit as being seen as an AI winner,” Bernstein senior internet analyst Mark Shmulik said this week. Though the company has excelled at “building foundational models … it’s just unclear what their commercial strategy there looks like,” he added.
Now, Meta is seeking to change that perception, introducing a fleet of AI tools throughout its products.
Zuckerberg emphasized that Meta’s strategy involves creating different AI products for different uses, as opposed to a single flagship chatbot. He added that Meta’s conversational bots aren’t intended to just convey information — they’re meant to be entertaining.
“I think this is going to transform the way that people use all of our products,” Zuckerberg said.
The new assistant will have limited availability in the United States. Meta also expects to bring the new assistant to Ray-Ban Meta, the newest version of its smart glasses and its newly released Quest 3 headsets.
The company said Meta AI will be able to help users answer questions in real time. For instance, users who are on a hike in Santa Cruz, Calif., can ask the tool for other locations to explore, according to the company. Meta AI will also be able to drum up creative images from text-based prompts.
New features on Instagram will let users create AI-generated images. One of these tools, Restyle, enables people to transform their photos into new styles, including making them look like they were painted with watercolors. Another, Backdrop, can change the scene or background of an image based on a text prompt such as “Put me in front of a sublime aurora borealis” or “surrounded by puppies,” the company said.
Celebrity-driven chatbots are intended to give users the impression they are talking to familiar people about their interests on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.
Meta’s announcements arrive in a crowded arena, as other tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI battle for dominance in generative AI — a technology that has captivated Silicon Valley. On Monday, OpenAI announced it was enabling users to talk with its ChatGPT chatbot. That same day, Amazon said it had signed a deal to invest up to $4 billion in the AI start-up Anthropic.
Meta follows a cohort of start-ups and major companies creating personality-driven chatbots designed to offer companionship and entertainment along with information. Earlier this year, the ephemeral message-sharing app Snapchat launched My AI, a chatbot designed to give users recommendations on everything from their cars to planning a wedding. The company has started experimenting with integrating sponsored links in the chatbot’s conversations with users.
Last year, two former Google employees launched Character. AI — a chatbot that allows users to start conversations with impersonations of Sherlock Holmes or Albert Einstein. In its first five months, the company said users have sent more than 2 billion messages and spend on average more than hours daily, according to the company.
Shmulik said the action makes “perfect sense” as a way to make Meta’s social media networks more engaging.
“When you look at some of the engagement metrics around it — people are really spending a lot of time, you know, talking to, like, Einstein,” said Shmulik, who cited Character. Ai and Snapchat as models. “There clearly is some appetite to kind of talk to characters.”
Over the past year, Meta’s AI investments have had an uneven reception. In August 2022, Meta released BlenderBot 3, an AI chatbot that was quickly ridiculed for spewing bigoted tirades and conspiracy theories. Just three months later, ChatGPT’s debut gained mainstream appeal for its sophisticated conversational skills.
This public image was on display in May, when the White House summoned the CEOs of four top AI companies to talk about policy with Vice President Harris. Notably missing:Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Later that month, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on AI oversight that included leaders from OpenAI and IBM — but not Meta.
Shortly after the White House meeting, Meta announced it was launching AI Sandbox, which enables marketers to use AI to create a range of text and visual options for their social media ads. The company has also been testing an internal productivity assistant known as Metamates and a generative-AI-based tool to enable users to modify photos via a text prompt and share them on their Instagram Stories.
But Meta’s open source approach, allowing companies and researchers to alter the source code, has come under fire from regulators and activists who argue giving away technology opens the door for misuse. Last month, Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, told members of Congress that his team had easily stripped Meta’s large language model of its safety controls, allowing it to tell users how to develop a biological weapon. (Zuckerberg retorted that anyone can find that information on the internet, The Washington Post has reported.)
Meta has also been pushing back against the doomsday scenarios from some prominent AI leaders such as Google’s former chief AI researcher Demis Hassabis, who say the tech is advancing so quickly that it might surpass human intelligence. President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and others have urged regulators to move cautiously, arguing that those existential threats are hypothetical.
Even if Meta overcomes regulatory hurdles, the company will still have to figure out how to make money off its AI research. The company has been recovering from a tough post-pandemic economic slump. Sluggish growth in the e-commerce market and new privacy rules prompted the tech giant to lay off more than 20,000 workers since November as part of a larger effort to flatten the workforce and increase efficiency.
But since the beginning of the year, Meta’s stock has risen more than 140 percent, thanks to improvements in the digital advertising market, the company’s job cuts and the growing popularity of its TikTok competitor Reels.
“When your core business is doing well you’re afforded more leeway to do some of these longer-term, more out-there type of initiatives,” Shmulik said. “Whereas if the core business is challenged, you know, you don’t get a lot of leash or runway.”
Meta debuts chatbots to compete against Google, Microsoft in AI technology - The Washington Post (archive.ph) |
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From: Glenn Petersen | 10/24/2023 1:59:40 PM | | | | Meta sued by 42 attorneys general alleging Facebook, Instagram features are addictive
October 24, 2023 Lauren Feiner @LAUREN_FEINER CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
- A bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general is suing Meta, alleging features on Facebook and Instagram are addictive and are aimed at kids and teens.
- The lawsuits demonstrate the broad bipartisan interest in protecting kids and teens from online harm.
- Meta designed its Facebook and Instagram products to keep young users on them for longer and repeatedly coming back, the attorneys general allege.
A bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general is suing Meta, alleging that features on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms are addictive and are aimed at kids and teens, the group announced Tuesday. The support from so many state attorneys general of different political backgrounds indicates a significant legal challenge to Meta’s business.
Meta is now facing multiple lawsuits on this issue in several districts. Attorneys general from 33 states filed a federal suit against Meta in the Northern District of California, while nine additional attorneys general are filing in their own states, according to a press release from New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office. Besides New York, the states that filed the federal suit include California, Colorado, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin.
The lawsuits are another demonstration of the bipartisan priority state law enforcers have placed on protecting kids and teens from online harm.
It’s also not the first time a broad coalition of state attorneys general have teamed up to go after Meta. In 2020, 48 states and territories sued the company on antitrust grounds, alongside a separate complaint from the Federal Trade Commission.
Meta designed its Facebook and Instagram products to keep young users on them for longer and repeatedly coming back, the attorneys general allege. According to the federal complaint, Meta did this via the design of its algorithms, copious alerts, notifications and so-called infinite scroll through platform feeds. The company also includes features that the AGs allege negatively impact teens’ mental health through social comparison or promoting body dysmorphia, such as “likes” or photo filters.
The federal suit also accuses Meta of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, by collecting personal data on users under 13 without parental consent.
The states are seeking an end to what they see as Meta’s harmful practices, as well as penalties and restitution.
Meta was well aware of the negative effects its design could have on its young users, the attorneys general allege.
“While Meta has publicly denied and downplayed these harmful effects, it cannot credibly plead ignorance,” James’ office wrote in a press release. “Meta’s own internal research documents show its awareness that its products harm young users. Indeed, internal studies that Meta commissioned — and kept private until they were leaked by a whistleblower and publicly reported — reveal that Meta has known for years about these serious harms associated with young users’ time spent on its platforms.”
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen caused an uproar among lawmakers and parents in 2021 after leaking internal documents from the company that revealed internal research on its products. One set of documents about Instagram’s impact on teens found that “thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” The Wall Street Journal reported before Haugen made her identity known. Following the report, Instagram said it was working on ways to pull users away from dwelling on negative topics.
“It should have been the practice of Meta to alert people that they were dealing with a dangerous, potentially addictive product before they started using it,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb told CNBC in a phone interview. Schwalb is among the attorneys general who filed an individual suit against Meta alleging it violated the district’s consumer protection law.
“We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path.”
Several of the practices the attorneys general focus on for Meta are similar to those exercised by other social media businesses, such as designing algorithms to keep users engaged.
Schwalb said that while he doesn’t think Meta is the only company trying to keep users’ attention with its features, “they do it very, very effectively and to the great detriment of millions of young people and tens of thousands of young people here in the District.”
“All human beings are susceptible to FOMO,” Schwalb said, referring to the fear of missing out. “But particularly 12- to 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids. They’re the ones who are really worried about missing out. All of that is part of the built-in DNA that Meta uses to keep people hooked.”
The broad coalition of bipartisan attorneys general underscores the wide-ranging interest from law enforcers on both sides of the aisle in consumer protection issues like this one. President Joe Biden has also made it a point to discuss the priority of protecting kids’ safety and mental health online in his State of the Union.
“I think when you find an issue like this, it’s a good opportunity for AGs to link arms across party [lines] to try to make America a safer place,” Schwalb said.
Meta sued by 42 AGs for addictive features targeting kids (cnbc.com) |
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To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (3763) | 10/26/2023 6:07:55 AM | From: Glenn Petersen | | | Meta beats on top and bottom lines as digital ad recovery pushes revenue up 23%
PUBLISHED WED, OCT 25 202312:00 PM EDT UPDATED WED, OCT 25 20239:46 PM EDT Jonathan Vanian @JONATHANVANIAN CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
- Meta reported better-than-expected results for the third quarter as revenue increased 23%, the fastest rate of growth since 2021.
- For the fourth quarter, Meta said it expects revenue of $36.5 billion to $40 billion.
- Net income rose 164% from a year earlier to $11.58 billion in the quarter.
Meta reported better-than-expected results for the third quarter as revenue increased 23%, the fastest rate of growth since 2021.
The stock initially rose in extended trading after the report, but then reversed course and fell more than 3% following cautionary comments from finance chief Susan Li about potential ad softness tied to the Middle East conflict.
Here are the key numbers:
- Earnings per share: $4.39 vs. $3.63 expected by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv
- Revenue: $34.15 billion vs. $33.56 billion expected by LSEG
Investors are also looking at user numbers:
- Daily active users (DAUs): 2.09 billion vs. 2.07 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
- Monthly active users (MAUs): 3.05 billion vs. 3.05 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
- Average revenue per user (ARPU): $11.23 vs. $11.05 expected, according to StreetAccount
Meta is seeing faster growth in its core digital ads business as clients rebound from a tough 2022, when revenue dropped for three straight quarters. Sales jumped from $27.71 billion a year earlier. Net income rose 164% to $11.58 billion, or $4.39 a share, from $4.4 billion, or $1.64 a share, a year earlier.
Meta’s business is outperforming competitors. Google parent Alphabet said in its earnings report Tuesday that ad revenue increased about 9.5%, while smaller rival Snap reported revenue growth of 5%.
A big part of Meta’s reacceleration appears to be because it is furthest along in terms of improving the effectiveness of its online ads following Apple’s iOS privacy changes in 2021, which made it hard for app developers to target users. Meta has pointed to its hefty investments in artificial intelligence as a key technology that has helped it land retailers looking to serve customers targeted promotions.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the earnings call that so far this year, the company has seen a 7% increase in time spent on Facebook and a 6% bump on Instagram “as a result of our recommendation improvements.”
Susan Li, Meta’s finance chief, told analysts on the call that online commerce was the biggest contributor to year-over-year growth in ad revenue, followed by consumer packaged goods and gaming.
However, Li said the company widened its revenue guidance range for the fourth quarter because of unpredictability in the Middle East due to the Israel-Hamas war.
“We have observed softer ads in the beginning of the fourth quarter, correlating with the start of the conflict, which is captured in our Q4 revenue outlook,” Li said on the call. “It’s hard for us to attribute demand softness directly to any specific geopolitical event.”
Meta said it expects revenue of $36.5 billion to $40 billion in the current quarter. Analysts were expecting sales for the quarter of $38.85 billion, according to LSEG. At the midpoint of the range, growth in the quarter will be about 19% higher from a year earlier.
Meta said expenses for 2023 will be in the range between $87 billion and $89 billion, which is down from its previous forecast of $88 billion to $91 billion. Expenses for 2024 will fall in the range between $94 billion and $99 billion.
“In terms of investment priorities, AI will be our biggest investment area in 2024, both in engineering and computer resources,” Zuckerberg said on the call.
Meta’s Reality Labs division, which focuses on virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, racked up $3.74 billion in operating losses for the quarter. It has now lost close to $25 billion since the start of last year — that’s after releasing its Quest 3 headset and other new products.
“I’m proud of the work our teams have done to advance AI and mixed reality with the launch of Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and our AI studio,” Zuckerberg said.
The company said it expects Reality Labs’ operating losses “to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”
Meta has 66,185 employees as of Sept. 30, which is a 24% year-over-year decrease. The company said “a substantial majority of the employees” who were part of its major cost-cutting efforts are no longer included in its headcount.
“Beginning in 2022, we initiated several measures to pursue greater efficiency and to realign our business and strategic priorities,” Meta said in its earnings release. “As of September 30, 2023, we have substantially completed planned employee layoffs while continuing to assess facilities consolidation and data center restructuring initiatives.”
Total costs and expenses declined 7% from a year earlier to $20.4 billion, underscoring Zuckerberg’s “ year of efficiency” declaration in February, when he emphasized the need for a slimmer and more nimble workforce.
Meta’s stock price is up about 150% this year, the second-best performer in the S&P 500, behind only AI chipmaker Nvidia
Meta Q3 earnings report 2023 (cnbc.com)0 |
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From: Glenn Petersen | 10/29/2023 6:22:55 AM | | | | Zuckerberg says Threads has almost 100 million monthly users
/ Watch out, Elon: ‘I’ve thought for a long time there should be a billion-person public conversations app that is a bit more positive,’ says Meta’s CEO.
By Alex Heath and Jay Peters The Verge Oct 25, 2023, 4:47 PM CDT
The rumors of Threads’ early demise have been exaggerated.
Meta’s competitor to Elon Musk’s X has hit “just under” 100 million monthly users since it was released in early July, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday during his company’s quarterly earnings call.
“We’re three months in now, and I’m very happy with the trajectory,” he said, echoing the bullish comments he made about how Threads is doing during a recent interview with The Verge. “We’re now getting to the point where we’re going to be focusing on growing the community further. From what we can tell, people love it so far.”
As the head of Instagram explained at the launch of Threads, Meta sees an opening to seriously compete with the platform formerly known as Twitter now that Musk has blown it up to create his X super app vision.
“I’ve thought for a long time there should be a billion-person public conversations app that is a bit more positive,” Zuckerberg said on Wednesday’s call. “I think that if we keep at this for a few more years, then I think we have a good chance of achieving our vision there.”
Meta CFO Susan Li shared some optimism, too. “Threads also remains a compelling long-term opportunity, and we’re excited to build on the strong product momentum we have going into next year,” she said during the call.
Meta launched Threads in July. While it was fairly barebones to start, the company has swiftly added a lot of welcome features, including a web app, the ability to search for posts, and an edit feature that you don’t have to pay for. The app remains unavailable in Europe due to Meta’s uncertainty about its ability to comply with new regulation there.
In a Threads post on Wednesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that “I’m hoping we can land support for Europe, early Fediverse progress, better Instagram integrations, and trends in the next few months.”
If you’re curious to hear Zuckerberg talk more about Threads, including his history of competing with Twitter and Meta’s plan to decentralize it, check out his recent interview on Decoder.
As part of its third-quarter earnings report, Meta said that it earned $34 billion in revenue, up 23 percent from the same quarter last year. However, it’s still burning cash with its Reality Labs division; the company expects its operating losses there to increase “meaningfully” year-over-year.
Meta’s Threads app has almost 100 million users, says Mark Zuckerberg - The Verge |
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From: Glenn Petersen | 11/22/2023 10:02:32 PM | | | | How Meta could benefit from the OpenAI shakeup
PUBLISHED WED, NOV 22 20235:15 PM EST UPDATED 41 MIN AGO Jonathan Vanian @IN/JONATHAN-VANIAN-B704432/ CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may not have been directly involved with the drama surrounding Sam Altman’s tumultuous departure from and then triumphant return to OpenAI, but the social networking executive and his company could benefit the most.
- Meta could stand to benefit as it’s been heavily touting its Llama-branded family of generative AI software.
- And it could attract AI workers who want stability. Its AI research team is considered, with Alphabet’s DeepMind, one of the most esteemed groups in the tech industry.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may not have been directly involved with the drama surrounding Sam Altman’s tumultuous departure from, then return to, OpenAI, but the social networking executive and his company could benefit from the ordeal.
There’s been much debate over the “winners” of the OpenAI executive saga, with some experts believing Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella proved victorious while the OpenAI board members who kicked off the debacle by firing Altman last Friday were the losers.
Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest financial backer, has been positioning the high-profile startup as a cornerstone cloud computing partner, promoting Altman and his team throughout the year at numerous events. It created a public association between itself and the high-flying maker of ChatGPT. But that backfired somewhat when critics questioned how the boardroom shenanigans could have escaped Nadella and his company’s watch.
Meanwhile, Meta and Zuckerberg had the luxury of watching the corporate circus from the sidelines. It could help Meta boost its open-source Llama AI initiatives, as some companies look to diversify away from relying on a single company’s large language model. And it may even help with recruiting.
Meta continues to invest heavily in the kinds of generative AI and related large language models that helped spawn OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Its AI research team is considered, with Alphabet’s DeepMind, one of the most esteemed groups in the tech industry.
Technologists looking to work in the private sector may find comfort in stability at Meta and its AI research lab following the seemingly near collapse of one of the industry’s leading AI startups.
As one user on Meta’s Twitter-like Threads service posted on Wednesday: “Everyone is saying MSFT is the big winner of [the] OpenAI fiasco. But I can easily see META being the big winner in the end.”
“If you’re an AI researcher and you’re going to work at big tech, it might as well be the company with the largest open source and public research presence,” the user said in the Threads post. Yann LeCun, Meta’s AI chief, responded to the post with a curt “Yup.”
Then there are the potential business opportunities.
The OpenAI fiasco raised concerns among the startup’s customers and other corporate leaders about whether they should only rely on one kind of LLM as part of their AI business strategies . Multiple technologists told CNBC that the OpenAI ordeal jumpstarted a push from businesses to lessen their reliance on OpenAI’s GPT family of LLMs to incorporate others from startups like Anthropic and Cohere.
Meta could benefit if companies continue to seek multiple AI vendors, much like firms now rely on multiple cloud providers. The company has heavily touted its Llama-branded family of generative AI software, which is available for free via an open-source model. Llama is attractive because developers can access and customize the LLM to their specific needs without being tethered to a particular vendor.
The more developers access and improve Llama, the more Meta can potentially lower its overall operating and technology research costs, among other benefits.
Finally, despite Llama’s licensing concerns and other potential issues, more companies and developers may choose to build apps with Meta’s AI software without fear that the social networking giant could collapse in a matter of days.
How Meta could benefit from the OpenAI shakeup (cnbc.com) |
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From: Glenn Petersen | 12/22/2023 8:56:26 PM | | | | Meta’s new Threads, a rival for X, is now Apple’s most downloaded app
Business Insider December 22, 2023
Threads this week became the most popular app in Apple’s US app store, showing the X rival is gaining traction in the wake of Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter.
The Threads app, a text-based social media platform from Meta that functions similarly to X, launched six months ago. After an immediate surge in popularity, which saw Threads break the record for an app to hit 150 million downloads, usage fell as the app lacked features and was relatively bare-bones. Over the ensuing weeks, the small team of 15 engineers that built the app on the back of Instagram’s tech tweaked and added to the platform, and users came back and seemed to stay. Then Threads launched a web version and on December 14, it opened up to the European Union.
That move seems to have pushed the platform this week to the top spot on Apple’s App Store. Although Threads was ranked in the top five in recent weeks, it moved to second place after opening to the EU, just behind Temu, a marketplace for discounted goods. On Wednesday it moved to first place and has remained there since. In the Google Play Store, Threads is the fifth most downloaded free app.
A year ago, Meta did not have an app in Apple’s top ten downloads, according to an archive of the company’s rankings. Today, Instagram is also in the top 10, and it and Facebook, Meta’s oldest platform, are growing faster than TikTok.
Over the last three months, users of Threads have steadily increased. Daily active users have grown 17% to just under 35 million people, and monthly active users are up 27% to just under 140 million people, according to Apptopia data. Total downloads since launch are 445 million, Apptopia shows.
Even before Threads became available to countries in the EU, the platform had shown some staying power. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said toward the end of October the platform had just under 100 million monthly active users, and he saw it getting to “a 1 billion-person conversation app that’s a bit more positive”. In mid-December, Apple, for the first time, released an end-of-year report on its top apps and games for 2023. Despite only launching in July, Threads was Apple’s fourth most-downloaded app for the entire year.
This contrasts with X, which Elon Musk purchased as Twitter a year ago and has dramatically morphed in his image.
Daily active users of X have fallen about 5% over the last three months, and monthly active users are down 1%, according to Apptopia data. Downloads remain at the lowest level in over a decade since Musk renamed the platform X, going against the value of the Twitter brand and the wishes of CEO Linda Yaccarino.
As Musk has seemingly delved deeper into extreme conservative political views, engaging and agreeing with racist and antisemitic tweets on X, essentially all major advertisers have fled, putting X’s existence at risk.
Musk has responded with public outbursts and anger. When asked about the advertiser exodus three weeks ago at the New York Times’s DealBook conference, the billionaire suggested he was being blackmailed and told advertisers to “go fuck yourself.” He also admitted that the loss of advertisers “is going to kill the company.”
Are you a Meta or X employee or someone with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device.
The post Meta’s new Threads, a rival for X, is now Apple’s most downloaded app appeared first on Business Insider.
Meta’s new Threads, a rival for X, is now Apple’s most downloaded app (dnyuz.com) |
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