Meta Reports Second Quarter 2024 Results [pdf]
s21.q4cdn.com
s21.q4cdn.com
I have always believed that this is the correct form factor for mass adoption of a new smart device. Right now it's audio-only feedback, but multi-modal LLMs blooming while they were building this product really worked in its favor.
It is kind of a big deal that they have internally developed a mass-market consumer product which appears to be successful, isn't it?
Side note: I find it hilarious that it isn't that much more expensive than a normal nice pair of Ray-Bans.
When this Ray-Ban product first shipped it made me think of an LVMH version: a smart purse. You would probably sell them even cheaper than the non-smart version. Luxury is a crazy market.
Also, I just learned that it's now "Essilor Luxottica" after the merger.
>We anticipate our full-year 2024 capital expenditures will be in the range of $37-40 billion, updated from our prior range of $35-40 billion. While we continue to refine our plans for next year, we currently expect significant capital expenditures growth in 2025 as we invest to support our artificial intelligence research and product development efforts
Another 2 bn to buying AI chips
I can't help but feel like the end game is that the vast majority of us work for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, or similar. Especially if any of these achieve anything approaching AGI.
Facebook is past it's sell by date yet even with Facebook / Meta (and it's family of apps) are being mired in scandals, investigations, large fines, violations, billions in large spending (e.g. metaverse) it still alive somehow.
I thought with all of the above it should be a dead company by now, but it's still here.
If this was any other company, any one scandal, investigations or large fines would bankrupt the company.
Why isn't Facebook / Meta dead yet?
> Facebook is past it's sell by date
I've not seen any evidence of this. Do you have supporting data in a decrease in MAUs/DAUs, or this more of an anecdote? I think a lot of us tend to over-extrapolate our personal experiences and beliefs to the population scale, not realizing that we're very much in a bubble of one kind or another.
> being mired in scandals, investigations, large fines, violations, billions in large spending
Users do. not. care. And so many of these scandals end up being overblown when the dust settles. Takes like "you are the product" are very much inside tech opinions that do not translate to the rest of the world. And I do mean world. Meta's apps continue to grow rapidly outside the U.S.
> still alive somehow.
It's not just still alive. It's thriving. Year over year, they grew revenue from $32B to $39B. That's +22%! That is astounding. Most companies 1/10th their size would kill for that kind of growth. And that's not to mention they grew net income by 73%.
I disagree with this. It's actually a pretty common understanding in UK culture at least; I've seen elderly photographers, young painters and one of my nephews use the phrase, recently.
Aside from the pithy "take", people absolutely do, instinctively, understand that if they aren't paying for something, it is them being sold in some way, to advertisers. Even if they assume incorrectly that it's somewhat more blatant than it actually is -- people think that big firms are actually selling their data en masse rather than selling gated access to it.
(I explain to people that you can really only sell a massive file of your customer data once; that's not where the big money is.)