Mark Zuckerberg has lost over $7.2 billion after major firms pulled advertising from Facebook Inc.’s network and the current net worth of Zuckerberg is $79.7B.
Shares of Facebook fell 8.3%, the most in three months, after Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers, joined other brands in boycotting ads on the social media network.
This has affected the market value of Facebook and has eliminated $56 billion from its market value and drove Zuckerberg’s net worth down to $82.3 billion according to Bloomberg. This has bought down mark Zuckerberg to the 4th richest person overtaken by the chief executive of Louis Vuitton Bernard Arnault who is now the third richest person in the world.
Major brands from Verizon to Hershey’s have stopped social media ads on Facebook after critics expressed that Facebook has failed to sufficiently monitor hate speech and disinformation on the platform.
Top Brands Boycotting Facebook Ads over Hate Speech
Unilever, $42.4 million in advertising
Uniliver One of the biggest advertisers in the world said it would stop running ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter in the United States for at least the rest of 2020.
Coca-Cola, $22.1 million
Coca-cola announced that it would stop all paid ads on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days. A Coca-Cola spokeswoman said that “The company was not joining the official Facebook boycott”.
Verizon, $22.9 million
The chief media officer of the telecommunications company said that it was “ it is pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable and is consistent with what we’ve done with YouTube and other partners.” Verizon has stopped both paid and unpaid ads on Facebook.
Honda America, $6 million in advertising
The automaker decided that it will withhold ads from Facebook and Instagram for the month of July to stand with people united against hate and racism.
Levi Strauss & Co., $2.8 million
the chief marketing officer of Levi Strauss Jen Sey has criticized Facebook for its failure to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform. Sey also wrote that Levi Strauss would suspend advertising at least through the end of July.
After this increasing criticism, Facebook revised its policies announcing that the company would label all voting-related posts with a link encouraging users to look at its new voter information hub. Facebook also expanded its definition of prohibited hate speech, adding a clause saying no adverts will be allowed if they label another demographic as dangerous.
Facebook, the social media giant, and one of the top companies in the field of Technology has been financially helping many startups across the world in the past few years by investing in them. Facebook has invested in Indian startups as well. Some of the Indian startups in which Facebook has previously invested have now become very big names such as the online teaching platform ‘Unacademy’ and Reliance Jio in which Facebook has invested huge amounts of money. Facebook recently has come up with a new venture for investing in startups and financially help them. Facebook recently posted a job opening for the role of ‘Head of Investments’. According to them, they were looking for someone who had at least 10 years of experience in the Technology field.
Facebook invests in Jio
According to the job opening posted by Facebook, they were looking for someone who can lead and manage the multi-million dollar project that invests in leading private companies and will also propose and lead the execution of many new investments in other companies and startups. The job opening floated on the internet recently but was soon taken down. Facebook has given a statement in response to this that the job vacancy has been filled without giving out the name of the person who has been selected for the job.
It is believed that this has been done to ensure that Facebook stays in close touch with the startup industry all over the world and to ensure that new startups and applications that they think will do big in the future can easily be acquired by them. The general idea of Facebook remains to try and acquire companies, generally social media platforms or tech-related companies, which are already large or have the potential to grow to great heights. For example, Facebook has acquired both Instagram and WhatsApp and tried to acquire Snapchat too, but they turned down the offer. Earlier this year, Facebook acquired GIPHY – The GIF Maker.
Two of the Biggest Social Media Platforms have been acquired by Facebook
Facebook has been investing in many startups. Some have received huge financial help, while others have received a relatively small amount of financial help. Facebook remains interested in startups with ideas that can generate huge revenues. Facebook has invested billions of dollars in Reliance Jio. This venture, however, is intended upon many of the small startups in the ‘Tech’ industry which will receive comparatively small financial aids. Facebook is reportedly looking for the best startups in different categories and will include these into this venture. Facebook offers it ‘Accelerator’ service to those startups who have managed to get their services or products out on the market already and are trying to grow. Facebook also offers its services to small startups who have just been launched and are currently working on their products or services. Facebook also has the option for full training under mentors for such startups.
This decision by Facebook will help boost the startup culture and ecosystem in India. More and more startups will come up with many new ideas every day. Therefore, this situation is a triple win situation. Firstly, the startups will benefit as they will receive financial aids. Secondly, Facebook will benefit by receiving huge amounts of returns when these startups, which are already acquired by them, turn into multi-million companies. Thirdly, the many new ideas that the startups will come up with will prove to be greatly beneficial for the general public.
However, Facebook is competing with many big companies such as Microsoft, Intel, and Google which are already investing in many startups around the country. All these companies try to become the leaders of this field, and these types of ventures help them succeed at this mission.
Recently a horrific incident took place in Minneapolis which led to massive protests by citizens of the USA. The incident happened On May 25, Minneapolis resident George Floyd was pinned face down on the ground in handcuffs, by a white police officer who pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.
George Floyd, a 46 year old black man, was suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Floyd was unresponsive when paramedics arrived, and he was declared dead later.This led to a massive protest in the USA which left protesters vandalizing vehicles and was set on fire.To present solidarity and in honor of George Floyd, most of the brands stood up against racism. They have shown their support to the protests by primarily using the medium of social media to align themselves.
Twitter
Major tech giants have also came forward to provide solidarity to George Floyd and stand up against racism. Twitter has officially revised its logo to black and added the hashtag “black lives matter” to its bio, this comes after when twitter added a warning label on tweets posted by President Donald Trump and the white house threatening to shoot protesters in Minnesota.
Twitter changed their logo in solidarity to support George Floyd
Facebook
Following this Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube also stepped in, Facebook has also changed its logo to black, but Facebook CEO faced massive criticism from the citizens of the USA as well as from its employees for over his refusal to act on President Donald Trump’s incendiary tweets about protests.
Facebook changed their logo in solidarity to support George Floyd
Unlike Twitter Facebook has not appended any warning label to posts by President Donald Trump that threatened “looting” in Minneapolis would lead to “shooting.” Zuckerberg has said his company “read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force”.
Speaking about Instagram, Instagram has also updated its cover image and display picture to black. The cover image says, ‘#ShareBlackStories.
Instagram changed their logo in solidarity to support George Floyd
Whatsapp
WhatsApp a famous messaging platform owned by Facebookhas also dyed its logo to black, to present solidarity to George Floyd, which pleasantly surprised fans of the instant messaging application.
Whatsapp changed their logo to honor black lives matter movement_Startuptalky
YouTube
YouTube has committed $1 million “in support of efforts to address a social injustice,” with CEO Susan Wojcicki noting on Twitter alongside the donation announcement that, “We stand together.” YouTube also changed the shade of its typically red logo to black on all of its social media platforms as a sign of solidarity.
YouTube changed their logo to honor black lives matter movement
These are times when we realize the power of social media, with the help of social media this incident came into light. We all are humans we all are same, We have end racism and hate towards a particular community because of#blacklivesmatter.
Americans are not new to racism, racism has been carried out in America from an early age. there are several occurrences reported of racism by the cops towards white and black, but many leave unattended this was one such incident which spread like a wildfire, and the citizens of America came forward to fight against racism.
Will companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft fail?
The future is highly uncertain and especially in the business world, where in one minute you can lose the glory of years. The business owners whether they are big or small has to be on the edge you never know when the fate turns and your billion dollars company scums to ground. Companies fail when they fail to adapt to the changing markets. Well, today we are going to discuss the business uncertainty issue by taking the examples of few big daddy’s of the business industry. Well, if we ask any amateur to name four world famous companies and trust me 99% folks will name Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. These four companies are very famous and it’s hard to not know about them.
“The point is, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect it to keep working. We had to do something different, but the really hard question was, What is it? We made plenty of mistakes along the way to answering that question, but the most important thing we identified was that we needed to know more about our customers and what problems they were really trying to solve in their businesses–even if they didn’t neatly fit into an existing category of ours.“ – Michael Dell
But, have you ever wondered which of these four multi nation brands will fail first and what will be the factors behind the fall down of these big sharks. Okay, so there are mainly two main grounds which will decide the success of any company. The two criteria points to examine the fall down are:
The number of talent retention and the success rate of the employees.
The revenue generation and method of revenue.
So, on the ground of these two major factors let’s examine which organization will fall first individually.
Google is dominating search engine since many years. Right now there is no strong competitor for Google.
Okay, on the grounds of employees retention and attracting the talent, Google has been the top company since 2003. The Google is the best talent attractor when it comes to large public companies. It has been the #1 Public company for over a decades. Google is still holding its foundation as a top company to work. From about 5000 employees in 2005 to about 70,000 in 2017, it is amazing that Google is able to maintain its top position with respect to quality of the hires. The companies who are able to over power Google are Uber and Airburn. That’s only because they are unicorns and it is easy for them to hire/ retain employees.
Google Revenue Source
The regular source of revenue for the Google will be the income generated from the advertisement and YouTube. The Google AdSense is the hub of advertisement and every blogger or website designer go for advertisement on Google only. To be honest, YouTube is very steady, so on the grounds of income Google is way more stable. Similarly, Google is also taking control over smartphone market, PC market with their Google Pixel and Chromebook. They are not relying on only-ads anymore. So, I guess it seems difficult that Google will fall.
Facebook has been a top company for about seven years now. During 2007–20011, the talent index at Facebook was identical to Google. Right now Facebook is the second best public company when it comes to talent attraction. But recently few changes in the Facebook talent index decrypted as they are losing some good talent to the unicorns. So, this is interesting to see the talent shift in Facebook headquarters, but still, Mark has few tricks up his sleeves to prevent this downfall.
Facebook Revenue Source
Facebook does not make any hardware so the major source of Facebook income is the advertisement and the information of their users. Facebook mainly relies on a single product that only works if it can retain its userbase of billions of people.Many other social media platforms like Instagram, Quora, Medium & Twitter are becoming popular. If it looses users on its application due to cases like Cambridge Analytica and privacy issues, it will be difficult for Facebook to survive.
Amazon is also ranked in the top ten company list and is ranked #3 among public companies for talent index. Although there was a tight tussle between Google, Facebook, and Amazon a few years back, the order now seems settled. Amazon comes ahead of other public companies like Linkedin, Salesforce, Apple, and Workday.
Amazon Revenue Source
The company earns their revenue from buying and selling. Amazon has a unique business model. Amazon shares have been in pretty good condition recently due to their new addition to grocery shopping and new product such as echo. The CEO Jefferson also become the richest person in the world beating the Microsoft CEO this year. That tells the stable economic condition of the company. With smart phones/e-commerce/prime/AWS, Amazon will likely to survive.
Microsoft is a HUGE company ! It’s twice as big as Google when it comes to the number of employees. It has been around forever. Right now Microsoft’s talent index is not in the same league as the other companies mentioned here. The inflow of talent at Microsoft is very different compared to Google/Facebook/Amazon. Microsoft was ranked in the top ten until 2010. From then, there has been a steady decline in talent. It is currently ranked #47. Microsoft has clearly lost the cool factor that it had during the last decade.
Microsoft Revenue Source
Microsoft has few big brands under their name. They earn income from computers, phones, and corporate solution, and to be the clear demand of these products is going nowhere in the near future. So, Microsoft is safe here and they are competent enough to change their approach as per the situation demand. It is very less likely to fall since it has its revenue spilt over various products.
Conclusion:
To be honest above mention all company are highly stable in their grounds and they have reached the position, where they are safe. There might ups and downs within these four companies, but in near future, they are going nowhere.
During lockdown imposed due to COVID-19, video calling software is hugely popular at the moment especially Zoom has seen the boom in its usage. Now the world’s largest social network Facebook has released a new video conferencing tool Messenger Rooms that resembles Zoom.
Due to lockdown and restrictions, many companies have asked their employees to work from home. We can say that Zoom rules the working from home video group chat kingdom right now as millions of people are relying on Zoom during the Coronavirus pandemic. Facebook wants more of the video calling market and hence has introduced a new tool called Messenger Rooms.
The feature will allow up to 50 people to participate in a video chat through a link. It lets you video chat with multiple people through Messenger even if you don’t have a social media account. Facebook says participants do not need to be Facebook users to access the feature. This could help the company compete with popular videoconferencing app Zoom during the Coronavirus pandemic.
The reason behind Zoom’s success was the requirement for businesses looking to keep connected and working with the maximum haste and minimum spend. But security and privacy was simply taken for granted by Zoom. One of the biggest security issues in Zoom is the increase in “Zoombombing” when uninvited attendees break into and disrupt your meeting. Thus, journalists, researchers and regulators have noticed its many security and privacy problems.
Taking security and privacy concerns for granted wasn’t a great idea after all. As a result, many users started looking out for other videoconferencing tool which can also ensure security & privacy concerns. Taking advantage of this situation, Facebook must have taken the decision to launch Messenger Rooms.
All about Messenger Rooms
As explained by Facebook in a blog post, Messenger Rooms is not a separate app but rather a feature that can be launched from the existing Facebook or Messenger apps. And users can play around with virtual backgrounds too, like Zoom app.
On Friday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a live broadcast, “ Messenger Rooms allows your friends and family to drop in at any time. Video presence isn’t just about calling someone. It’s starting to be a fundamental building block of a private social platform with lots of different use cases.”
More than 700 million accounts participate in voice and video calls every day on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook said that the number of group video calls has gone up by more than 10 times in some cases since the coronavirus outbreak began.
Mark Zuckerberg said, ” I know that this is a challenging period for so many of us around the world. My hope is that we can make a difference during this time and in the months ahead.”
Facebook said that it would soon be adding Messenger Rooms integration to Instagram, WhatsApp, and the Portal video caller too. So users can jump into a video chat from whatever app or device they happen to be on.
In many countries, video calling on Messenger and WhatsApp more than doubled and views of Facebook Live and Instagram Live videos increased significantly in March when the lockdowns and social distancing came into practice globally. way of keeping in touch with friends and family while we’re all shut up and separated indoors.
Comparing both apps, in social distancing times, Zoom allows up to 100 people to join a free video meeting from the comfort of their homes. But Zoom has put limit of 40 minutes on free calling. While, Facebook has announced Messenger Rooms that will allow group video calls of up to 50 people with no time limit.
How to use Messenger Rooms?
People can create a room right from Messenger or Facebook and invite anyone to join the video call even if they don’t have a Facebook account. In Facebook Messenger Rooms, the users can also post links in their News Feed or in Groups or event pages. All you need to do is create a Room by clicking on a video icon on Facebook Messenger.
When you create a room, you choose who can see and join it. You can remove people from the call. Users can also lock a room if they don’t want anyone else to enter. If your friends or communities create rooms that are open to you, you’ll see them on Facebook so you can find things to do and people to hang out with. You can join video calls through a phone or computer.
Facebook has given many controls to Host
What about Privacy?
Facebook says it has added a number of privacy features to secure Rooms unlike Zoom. The person who creates a room has the authority to let people join and must be present in order to initiate a call. The room creator can remove guests, and the room automatically locks for that person when he or she leaves.
If your colleagues or friends create a room that is open for you, you will see them at the top of your news feed. The room can be limited to the members of the group or else anyone with the link can be allowed in. You can control who sees the room.
Those who have been previously blocked on Facebook won’t be able to see the feature or join in. Additionally, people can report a group video chat for violating Facebook’s rules. Facebook has assured that it does not view or listen to calls. Facebook clarified that room calls are not end-to-end encrypted.
Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook’s vice president of Messenger explained, ” We don’t view or listen to your calls, and the person who creates the room controls who can join, who sees the room, and if the room is locked or unlocked to new guests.”
Difference between Messenger Rooms and regular video calling on Facebook
Facebook already has video calling feature in its Messenger app. There are several differences between Messenger Rooms and regular calling on Facebook. In messenger rooms, participants do not compulsorily need a Facebook account to join a video call created in Messenger Rooms.
Like Zoom app, users can lock a room once everyone has joined in so that no one else can join. Only the person who created a room can grant permission to let someone join the video call. If you’ve blocked someone on Facebook or Messenger, they won’t be able to join a call. These features cannit be seen in regular Facebook video calling.
Facebook is also adding new augmented reality effects in Messenger Rooms. It would include 14 camera filters to brighten your space and your face. Facebook is also introducing 360-degree backgroundsso users can feel like they’re somewhere else like the beach, space, etc. while they video chat. Users can play with AR effects like bunny ears and new AI-powered features like immersive 360 backgrounds and mood lighting.
Facebook plans to add an option in Facebook Dating feature that makes it easier to meet and start new conversations with people who share your interests. This feature will be integrated within the main social network so that users can invite people to video chat in Messenger.
When will Messenger Rooms be available?
Facebook said it will be releasing out Messenger Rooms in selected countries this week before expanding globally. Other countries will get Rooms in the coming weeks. The social network didn’t specify which countries will get the new feature first.
The release of the new tool Messenger Rooms is part of Facebook’s efforts around video presence which he defined as the ability to feel like you’re connected to someone live over video.
The company has also been expanding features for Facebook Live which is a tool people have been using more during the pandemic to work out, cook or attend religious services virtually. Facebook said it will bring back a tool that allows users to add another person to a live video.
Instagram will now let you comment on live videos on your desktop and it also will make it possible to save your videos to IGTV so people can watch them after 24 hours. Facebook also plans to introduce a feature that’ll let you broadcast a live video from Facebook Portal to Facebook Pages and Groups.
WhatsApp Group Calls will now be able to host a maximum of eight people instead of four. During lockdowns, views of Facebook Live and Instagram Live videos have also increased significantly in March. Facebook’s Live With video will allow people streaming a live video to invite another person to participate alongside them.
India has gone through a rapid digital transformation over the last few years. After coming of Jio into existence in the Indian ecosystem. This contribution in the Indian market has increased the use of smartphone and internet with a great pace and it has grown exponentially. Now, Jio has collaborated with a social media giant Facebook, making it the world’s largest made by any technology company in the world. Let us read the key aspects of Jio-Facebook Partnership.
Highlights of Jio-Facebook Partnership
Jio-Facebook Partnership
The Facebook Inc. is the world’s largest social media company. The company has announced that it has invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake as a minority investor in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms in the nation’s most valued firm, Reliance Industries which is the biggest telecom operator in the country with more than 370 million subscribers giving its services in all the sectors of telecom operations.
Jio was valued at $65.95 billion at the pre-money valuation period. This makes Facebook- the social giant, the largest minority shareholder in the Indian telecom network by bidding for nearly 10% of the stakes in Reliance Jio telecom subsidiary platform.
The Jio-Facebook Partnership will work in the direction of bringing together JioMart, which will be an e-commerce business retail platform which will be providing all types of facilities under a single platform using the technologies and data of both the companies. Some of the experts are also saying that, this can be the nation’s largest retail chain, with the integration of WhatsApp as this messaging platform is having a biggest market with more than 400 million users. WhatsApp is also the most popular smartphone app in India.
The Reliance Jio-Facebook Partnership wants to replicate the USP of Wechat in India by creating an all-in one, multi-utility platform named as ’JioMart’.
WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, mobile payment app and social media platform developed by Tancent. It was first released in 2011, and gained so much popularity that it became one of the world’s largest standalone mobile apps in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Due to exponential increase in the popularity, WeChat has been described as China’s “app for everything” and a “super app” because of its multiple range of functions under a same console roof.
The JioMart platform will be having all the payment facility and E-commerce of Jio itself, who is having all its platform ready to use eg:- Ajio, JioMoney. The company is going to integrate WhatsApp facility for completing any type of purchasing with the help of WhatsApp payments option. All the other facilities which are not provided by them, will be provided with the integration of retailers of those special services. This specially include, the kirana-retailor, which will be helping them to complete their all-facility-single-platform-hub. So, in this way, this collaboration is going to replicate the model of WeChat in India.
Other Investment of Facebook in India
This is not the first time when Facebook has made any investment in India. From the past, it has been seen that the Facebook has made some investment in some of the other tech start-ups. Some of these startups consist of edutech and social commerce reseller platform.
The social commerce reseller platform, Meesho has been funded by Facebook with around $20-25 million. It is a platform where people act themselves as a seller by just listing it on their digital-social groups, in other words a drop-shipping business in your local group.
The edutech startup Byju’s has been funded by Facebook with around $50 million. This startup works on the interactive way of providing education of students from primary classes to all the competitive exams.
The edutech startup Unacademy has been funded by Facebook with around $110 million. This startup provides the best teachers for all types of competitive exams and provides a focus on detailed study while sitting in any corner of the country
These funded startups are: Byju’s, Unacademy and Meesho. Though exact amounts of investment is not disclosed in these cases but, it is a well-known fact that the Facebook is just trying to integrate every type of business platform with the widely used messaging app i.e. Whatsapp. This will help Facebook in getting the data of the people, which can help Facebook to run a suitable ads for it, according to the needs and requirements of the people which can become a potential customers of different other businesses via Facebook ads marketplace.
Google has announced that they will be allowing the merchants to list their products on Google Shopping search results for free of cost starting with the US and to be continued in the whole world. This is one of the new way to kick start their work while helping the retailers to sell their product and asking the ads merchants to take the advantage of this new opportunity in the person of lockdown. The main concentration of Google in this case is to revive their revenue source in this difficult situation where they are not having work due to complete global lockdown. Google Shopping ads now drive 76.4% of retail search ad spend, generating 85.3% of all clicks on Adwords or Google Shopping campaign ads. Let us discuss that weather this initiative will be going to be a boon or a bane for Google.
Benefits of the Google shopping campaign
Benefits of the Google shopping campaign
The Google has shown the benefits and the interest of all 3 sections of the society (retailers, shoppers and ads merchants) who are directly connected with the Google shopping facility.
The change given in Google shopping, in the product search offering will help the retailers in such a way that; -now they will be able to get free exposure and experience to millions of people( new and existing) who come to Google every day for fulfilling their required shopping products and materials.
Like the retailers, the shoppers will be able to get more choices over the product and the brands over better pricing from more stores due to the new campaign by Google Shopping. This will be all possible on discovery through the Google Shopping tab on the Google search platform or Google search engine.
The advertisers will also get the benefit of this new facility provided by Google shopping in such a manner that, now they will be getting a new section for running paid campaigns because of this free listings on Google shopping tab. The Ads merchant will be able to get the advantage of the free listings, and this will inspire the new Ads merchant to work in this streamline and make it a new source of revenue.
Google has also made a new partnership with many other platforms for the Google Shopping tab that are working in the same field and helping the businesses by providing their premium facilities. These platform include
Google will be going to work with all the platforms which help the merchants manage their products and inventory in Google Shopping tab, easily without any tension of any type of e-commerce facilities. This includes Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, which helps the make in making a virtual digital commerce platform for themselves.
During the period of COVID-19 and so far, Amazon’s trillion-dollar company, Jeff Bezos has been considered, the most notable winner in terms of business working and expansion who has added $24 billion in his total wealth from the same time, the global shutdown began. While on the other hand, the tech giants like Google and Facebook who are having all their revenue from ads are facing heavy crisis, as there is no business in the world and so, advertisers has cut a big portion from their 2020 marketing budgets. This has pushed the tech giant like Google in the back-foot. The company is now trying to search a new source income in the person of global lockdown.
Since, all the businesses are shut down in this time period except the e-commerce and the basic utility business so, this tech giant is also trying all it’s strategies in the same sector by just integrating it their own business model and making this facility, free for all.
