Messages in bottles: a sign of strategic wandering
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2025 6:46 am
The market is relieved that Mark Zuckerberg isn't sticking with the metaverse impasse and is refocusing the company on AI. But this remains a huge failed gamble, which should legitimately raise questions about Mark Zuckerberg's strategic vision and ability to execute. Is he still the visionary he was twenty years ago?
"In another company less focused on the founder myth, the board of directors would have exerted pressure to dismiss or force the saudi arabia mobile database of a leader who promised a revolution that backfired, but which cost $36 billion in R&D and led to the dismissal of more than 20,000 people," said an analyst consulted by La Tribune, while specifying that Mark Zuckerberg took every precaution in Meta's bylaws to avoid such a scenario.
The departure last year of the famous COO Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg's right-hand woman since 2008, as well as the numerous articles published in the American press describing the disconnect between the leader and his own employees since the metaverse shift, also raise questions.
Especially since Mark Zuckerberg has been launching strategic diversification avenues since the end of 2022 that seem like so many bottles thrown into the sea without any real purpose, in the hope that one of them will work and reduce the group's dependence on advertising.
Thus, Twitter's slow descent into hell since its acquisition by Elon Musk has inspired Mark Zuckerberg with two ideas. The first, announced at the end of February, is to test for Facebook and Instagram the paid subscription model that Elon Musk implemented—unsuccessfully—for Twitter. The concept: Meta Verified subscribers will be able to have their account verified by providing an official ID card, and then display a blue badge, signaling that they are who they say they are. Their account will also be better protected against the risk of identity theft thanks to proactive monitoring. As with Twitter, their messages, photos, and videos will be better relayed than others, appearing at the top of search results, comments, and recommendations. The subscription is already available in Australia and New Zealand, and will then be extended to other countries, starting with the United States.
Finally, Zuckerberg's second big idea inspired by the Twitter debacle is... to replace it. In early March, Meta announced that it was working on creating a new social network similar to Twitter, except that it would be decentralized. According to the Platformer website , this future app would be accessible using Instagram logins and interoperable with other similar networks, such as Mastodon. A launch date has not been specified, and the project may never even see the light of day. But it illustrates Meta's strategic wandering, reduced to copying the features of its competitors, notably TikTok and Snapchat, and trying to occupy their space.
"In another company less focused on the founder myth, the board of directors would have exerted pressure to dismiss or force the saudi arabia mobile database of a leader who promised a revolution that backfired, but which cost $36 billion in R&D and led to the dismissal of more than 20,000 people," said an analyst consulted by La Tribune, while specifying that Mark Zuckerberg took every precaution in Meta's bylaws to avoid such a scenario.
The departure last year of the famous COO Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg's right-hand woman since 2008, as well as the numerous articles published in the American press describing the disconnect between the leader and his own employees since the metaverse shift, also raise questions.
Especially since Mark Zuckerberg has been launching strategic diversification avenues since the end of 2022 that seem like so many bottles thrown into the sea without any real purpose, in the hope that one of them will work and reduce the group's dependence on advertising.
Thus, Twitter's slow descent into hell since its acquisition by Elon Musk has inspired Mark Zuckerberg with two ideas. The first, announced at the end of February, is to test for Facebook and Instagram the paid subscription model that Elon Musk implemented—unsuccessfully—for Twitter. The concept: Meta Verified subscribers will be able to have their account verified by providing an official ID card, and then display a blue badge, signaling that they are who they say they are. Their account will also be better protected against the risk of identity theft thanks to proactive monitoring. As with Twitter, their messages, photos, and videos will be better relayed than others, appearing at the top of search results, comments, and recommendations. The subscription is already available in Australia and New Zealand, and will then be extended to other countries, starting with the United States.
Finally, Zuckerberg's second big idea inspired by the Twitter debacle is... to replace it. In early March, Meta announced that it was working on creating a new social network similar to Twitter, except that it would be decentralized. According to the Platformer website , this future app would be accessible using Instagram logins and interoperable with other similar networks, such as Mastodon. A launch date has not been specified, and the project may never even see the light of day. But it illustrates Meta's strategic wandering, reduced to copying the features of its competitors, notably TikTok and Snapchat, and trying to occupy their space.