Facebook rebranded itself as Meta to lean into the Metaverse vision. It aims to transit the company from a social media company to AR + VR company. I want to talk about some of my thoughts on Meta’s history.
Meta.org
First, let’s see where is the origin of the name “Meta”. From the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s article: Meta Transition:
Meta ULC was a Canadian unlimited liability corporation performing big data analysis of scientific literature. The Meta was registered as a trademark in the US in 2018 (initial filing is in 2015) by the company mentioned above. This company is the first acquisition of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2017.
The Meta(Meta.org) was announced to sunset on Oct 28, 2021. And Facebook’s rebrand to Meta Platforms was introduced at Facebook Connect on October 28, 2021.
So it has some overlapping timelines.
Sell stocks
Starting 2016. Zuckerberg Mark sold $14 billion worth of stocks, which is around 4% of Meta(Consider market capitalization around $350 billion). For 13c in Dec 2021, Zuckerberg owns 13% of Meta, which is now around $46 billion as of Oct 16, 2022.
All trades are documented here: Google Sheet
If we look deep into the SEC Form 4, Most of the trades are under Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. which is a non-profit org. Its creation was announced on 1 December 2015.
In December 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stake. From https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?list=billionaires&sh=4699618a3e06.
Unlike a revocable trust, the non-profit org has tax advantages when selling stocks.
Updates on 11/11/2022, another data is the voting power of Meta. Data and graph is from
Zuckerberg has 13.52% of all shares, but he has 57.14% of the voting power. Technically, if he still wants to sell and controls the company, there are not many shares to sell now.
Acquisitions and Re-org
In 2013, Meta was worrying about the rise of another social media app, Snapchat. So, Zuckerberg rolled up with his truck full of bucks and offered founder and CEO Evan Spiegel a reported $3 billion. But the deal was rejected.
But there are other big acquisitions that happened in Meta’s history:
- Instagram was acquired on April 9, 2012. Co-founder Kevin Systrom joined Meta and left in Oct 2018. Another co-founder Mike Krieger also joined Meta and left in Oct 2018.
- WhatsApp was acquired on Feb 19, 2014. Co-founder Brian Acton left Meta in Nov 2017. Co-founder Jan Koum left Meta in Aug 2018.
- Oculus was acquired on Mar 25, 2014. CEO and co-founder Brendan Iribe left in Nov 2018.
Ok, what happened from late 2017 to 2018? News on May 8, 2018, Facebook is making its biggest executives shuffling in history.
WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook’s core app are getting new leaders as part of a massive executive reorg. These founders are now reporting to a new leader caused by this reorg. So not surprisingly, these people left.
ITP and ATT (Death of third-party cookie)
The impact of ITP and ATT is losing at least 10% of ads revenue. But considering the incorrect tracking, the impact might be more than that. Chrome’s version of ITP will be rolled out in 2023. GDPR is launched which is another blocker of conversion tracking.
The most straightforward definition is that ITP is no conversion tracking for Safari, and ATT is no conversion tracking for the iPhone app.
Timeline of ITP:
- September 16, 2015. iOS 9 now allows users to install 3rd-party apps that block certain types of content in Safari, such as ads, and tracking scripts.
- June 5, 2017. In Safari 12 and iOS 11, the 3rd-party cookies’ lifetime is restricted to 24 hours, which means long-term tracking is not feasible anymore. This is called ITP
More details can be found at: https://clearcode.cc/blog/timeline-apple-privacy-changes/
Since we are friends, you are welcome to use my text, but please credit the source: https://alwa.info