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Adam Allington
Facebook-parent Meta reported on Wednesday that first quarter sales grew by 3 percent, far exceeding Wall Street analysts’ expectations for revenue, earnings and user growth. The following Cornell University experts are available to discuss the announcement.
John Blevins
Adjunct Professor
John Blevins, guest lecturer in Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, focuses on technology-driven market changes, strategic management and leadership in the tech sector.
Blevins says:
“Meta has reassessed its business strategy after a dismal and stock-price-reducing fixation on reorienting the company’s best technical talent towards metaverse development over the last year. Realizing the current pipeline of continuous flow revenue comes from advertising, Meta has reemphasized user engagement and growth to attract those advertisers.
“The firm’s management, namely Mark Zuckerberg, still sees VR and the metaverse as its future path to advancement, but this zeal will be tempered as they share their time more with general social media business management basics.
“Meta’s cost reductions from recent layoffs are now being realized. The company still has tremendous work ahead to remain relevant to its user base. Rival platforms such as TikTok, have leveraged more powerful algorithmic models to increase content relevancy, resulting in greater user engagement. Meta has a strong legacy user base to grow from but is struggling with relevancy with newer generations that still pose a threat if not addressed.”
Aditya Vashistha
Assistant Professor of Information Science
Aditya Vashistha, assistant professor of information science, studies computing systems with a focus on the Global South. He argues Meta needs to prioritize their fastest growing user base.
Vashistha says:
“Meta has seen a massive growth in users based in non-Western contexts, however, the AI technologies they have do not work well for users who speak non-Western languages.
“Facebook’s automated moderation systems are Western-centric and often fail to account for the diverse linguistic and cultural expressions of users in the Global South. To bring more revenues, Meta needs to prioritize the needs of their largest and fastest growing user group and make their underlying AI technologies more diverse, accountable, and transparent."
