Yes, there were financial results to be had. And they were stellar. Despite concern that digital and social media advertising might have fallen on hard times during the quarter, Meta reported earnings per share (EPS) of $5.16 on revenue of $39.07 billion. Meta recorded EPS of $2.98 on revenue of $31.9 billion during the same period last year.

The company’s Family of Apps revenue, which includes revenue from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, came in at $38.72 billion, higher than estimates of $37.7 billion and much higher than the revenue of $31.7 billion in Q2 2023.

While those results led off the call, Zuckerberg wasted no time detailing his vision for how AI will play in the Meta ecosystem and, perhaps more importantly, how it will make money in that ecosystem. He separated his comments into three areas: How AI will play in existing products, how it will succeed as an open-source system, and how it will help Meta continue to develop the metaverse.

First, Zuckerberg highlighted AI’s role in enhancing content recommendations and advertising capabilities. He described a vision for a “single unified recommendation system” powering all content across Meta’s services. On the advertising front, Zuckerberg predicted that AI would eventually generate personalized ad creative, allowing advertisers to simply specify business objectives and budgets, with Meta’s AI handling the rest.

“Advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget, and we’re going to go do the rest for them,” he said. “We’re going to get there incrementally over time, but I think this is going to be a very big deal.”

Zuckerberg also underscored the importance of Meta’s open-source AI model, Llama 3.1, positioning it as an “inflection point” for the industry. He argued that open-source AI will become the industry standard, similar to Linux in operating systems. The CEO emphasized the benefits of open-source AI for developers, Meta itself, and society at large, citing improved safety, faster innovation, and shared prosperity.

Zuckerberg also revealed plans for Llama 4, aiming to be “the most advanced in the industry next year,” with compute requirements nearly 10 times that of Llama 3.

Finally, Zuckerberg discussed how AI is shaping Meta’s metaverse ambitions. He noted that AI advancements have accelerated timelines for some products, particularly highlighting the success of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and the Quest 3 VR headset. Zuckerberg sees AI as integral to the future of these devices, with plans to incorporate more AI capabilities into future generations of smart glasses and VR headsets. He teased further announcements related to AI and metaverse developments at Meta’s upcoming Connect conference on Sept. 25.

And how much will all that cost? Zuckerberg left that issue for CFO Susan Li.

“While we do not intend to provide any quantitative guidance for 2025 until the fourth quarter call, we expect infrastructure costs will be a significant driver of expense growth next year as we recognize depreciation and operating costs associated with our expanded infrastructure footprint,” Li said.

The post Zuckerberg Details AI Vision in Meta’s Q2 Earnings Call appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The tech giant last year introduced Meta Verified for businesses on Facebook and Instagram, and recently began offering subscriptions for businesses on WhatsApp.

“The expanded Meta Verified business offering on Facebook and Instagram includes the verified badge along with enhanced account support, impersonation protection, and additional features to support discovery and connection,” Meta said in a blog post Monday (July 22).

“Together these features give businesses an opportunity to drive growth and support a wider variety of business needs and activities on our apps.”

According to the blog post, the company has enhanced its offerings for the program based on feedback from businesses and market research. Business owners say they want to be verified as it lends them credibility and makes customers more confident to patronize them.

“In fact, the verified badge continues to be one of the top reported reasons for subscribing to Meta Verified,” the company said.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, “social media apps are becoming more and more involved in retail, with younger generations disproportionately engaging with social commerce.”

Research from last year’s PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media,” shows that 43% of consumers browse social media to find goods and services, while 14% ultimately purchase those goods and services. Those shares climb to 68% and 22%, respectively, for Gen Z and to 64% and 22% for millennials.

In addition, a recent PYMNTS Intelligence special report, “Generation Zillennial: How They Shop,” found that 28% of Gen Z consumers had made a retail purchase in the prior 30 days at least partially because of a social media influencer or celebrity, while 39% had done so at least in part because of an ad they’d seen on social media.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about Meta’s decision to withhold its latest multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) model from the European Union, a move that stems from uncertainties surrounding compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), especially when it comes to AI model training employing user data from Facebook and Instagram.

“Under GDPR, an individual essentially has the right to challenge any automated decision. But as AI has grown exponentially, human knowledge and understanding has not kept pace,” David McInerney, commercial manager at Cassie, a consent and preference management platform, told PYMNTS.

A key issue facing companies such Meta is whether they can explain AI decision-making processes, that report added.

“Businesses can say they trained their AI, and it made an automated decision. But if companies aren’t able to properly explain how that decision was made, they cannot fulfill their legal obligation in the GDPR,” McInerney said.

The post Meta Expands Business Subscription Program to India appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) said in a Friday (July 19) press release that the company violated the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA) 2018, the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation 2019 (NDPR) and other relevant laws.

The FCCPC said in the release that the violations include “abusive and invasive practices against data subjects/consumers in Nigeria, such as appropriating personal data or information without consent, discriminatory practices against Nigerian data subjects/consumers or disparate treatment of consumers/data subjects compared with other jurisdictions with similar regulatory frameworks, abuse of dominant market position by forcing unscrupulous, exploitative and non-compliant privacy policies which appropriated consumer personal information without the option or opportunity to self-determine or otherwise withhold or provide consent to the gathering, use and/or sharing of such personal data.”

Responding to the announcement of the fine, a WhatsApp spokesperson provided Bloomberg with a statement saying: “In 2021 we went to users globally to explain how talking to businesses among other things would work and while there was a lot of confusion then, it’s actually proven quite popular. We disagree with the decision today as well as the fine and we are appealing the decision.”

This announcement comes a day after Meta told Reuters that it will suspend its generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in Brazil after one of the country’s regulators objected to part of the company’s privacy policy.

Earlier in July, Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority suspended the validity of Meta’s new privacy policy, saying the company would have to exclude the section about the processing of personal data for generative AI training.

About a month before that, on June 10, Meta said in an update to an earlier blog post that it paused its planned launch of its AI assistant, Meta AI, in Europe after the Irish Data Protection Commission, on behalf of the European data protection authorities, asked it to delay training its large language models using content shared by adults on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.

The post Nigerian Regulator Fines Meta $220 Million, Alleging Privacy Law Violations  appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

“Threads now has more than 175M monthly actives. What a year,” Meta Founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Wednesday (July 3) post on the text-based social media platform.

Built by Meta’s Instagram team, Threads was launched on July 5, 2023, in more than 100 countries. The company said at the time that the app offers a space to share posts that are up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.

“Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas,” Meta said in a press release announcing the launch. “Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests — including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond.”

After the app garnered 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours after its debut, Zuckerberg said he envisioned a much higher number that would surpass the 300 million-plus users Twitter (now X) had at the time.

“There should be a public conversations app with 1 billion-plus people on it,” he said. “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

In April, Zuckerberg said during Meta’s quarterly earnings call that Threads had more than 150 million monthly active users and was “growing well.”

“There are now more than 150 million monthly actives, and it continues to generally be on the trajectory I hoped to see,” Zuckerberg said.

“My daughters would want me to mention that Taylor Swift is now on Threads — that was a big deal in my house,” he added.

Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said later in the call that Threads “continues to see good traction as we continue to ship valuable features and scale the community.”

In May, Threads began testing a “pinned columns” feature on its web application that allows users to pin as many as 100 feeds to their home page so that they can easily jump to those from people they follow, those recommended by the Threads algorithm, or those based on keywords or topics they have specified.

The post Threads Gains 175 Million Users in First Year appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The company aims to reduce the number of vice president positions from the 300 it had last year to about 250, Seeking Alpha reported Wednesday (June 12).

Meta did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

This news comes after thousands of job cuts were announced by Meta over the past two years.

In March 2023, the company said it planned to lay off another 10,000 employees after cutting 11,000 jobs in November 2022. The company also said at the time that it would freeze hiring for another 5,000 roles that had been open.

The 11,000 layoffs announced in November 2022 accounted for 13% of Meta’s workforce at the time and were the first wide-ranging layoffs in its history. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said when announcing those cuts that the move was driven by online returning to prior trends after having increased during the pandemic.

The following round of layoffs announced in March 2023 were part of a restructuring plan that aimed to flatten the company’s organizations, cancel lower priority projects, slow hiring rates and reduce the size of the recruiting team.

When announcing that round of job cuts, Zuckerberg said Meta’s moves would be guided by some principles focused on making it “an even stronger technology company.”

Those principles include removing multiple layers of management and giving managers as many as 10 direct reports, canceling projects that are duplicative or of lower value, making every organization leaner, building an optimal ratio of engineers to other roles, investing in artificial intelligence (AI) and other tools and studying the effectiveness of a distributed workforce.

In the company’s most recent earnings report, Meta said its capital expenditures on AI and the metaverse-development division Reality Labs will range between $35 billion and $40 billion by the end of 2024.

That total was $5 billion more than it initially forecasted for developing new AI products for consumers, developers, businesses and hardware manufacturers.

In May, Zuckerberg formed a product advisory council to provide guidance on the company’s AI and technology efforts.

The post Report: Meta to Reduce VP Positions From 300 to 250 appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Unlike its competitors, Meta is giving away its AI model and chatbot for free. This approach marks a departure from the targeted advertising tools used in Meta’s other platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram.

In a recent announcement at a conference in Brazil, Meta launched its first AI-driven ad targeting program for businesses on WhatsApp. According to the Wall Street Journal, this marks a significant shift for the encrypted messaging service, which has previously emphasized its privacy credentials and avoided targeted advertising. The new AI tools will leverage user behavior on Facebook and Instagram to deliver messages to customers who are most likely to engage with them. Businesses will now have the opportunity to optimize ad delivery to these receptive users, which is crucial as they are paying for these messages.

Meta has been actively working to monetize WhatsApp, its largest app in terms of daily users. Despite its widespread popularity and the hefty $22 billion acquisition price in 2014, WhatsApp has contributed only a small portion of Meta’s total revenue. To address this, Meta has introduced commerce and payment features on the app, including business messaging tools for customer service and marketing. The new AI chatbot on WhatsApp will allow businesses to outsource their communications to automated tools, streamlining the process of answering common inquiries and providing assistance with tasks like finding catalogs or checking business hours.

Furthermore, Meta announced that it will integrate Brazil’s digital payment method PIX into its WhatsApp payment tool. PIX, developed by the central bank, accounted for approximately 39% of transactions in Brazil last year and offers similar services to WhatsApp payments, including money transfers and purchases from companies. This addition demonstrates Meta’s commitment to expanding its payment services within WhatsApp, following a similar move in India where it started offering payment services from rival providers.

The post Meta Platforms to Introduce Free AI Chatbots on WhatsApp appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

“Facebook is still for everyone, but in order to build for the next generation of social media consumers, we’ve made significant changes with young adults in mind,” the social media giant wrote in a blog post Friday (May 31).

“And with five quarters of healthy growth in young adult app usage in the US and Canada, over 40 million US/CA young adults are daily active users, and this number is the highest in three years,” the post continued.

As these young adults are making transitions like heading to college or getting their first apartment or job, Facebook says it has made changes to its core product to help them shop, find love or find work.

That has meant expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, with plans to add more advanced recommendation technology to the company’s “entire video ecosystem,” as well as its feed recommendations.

“We also made it easier for anyone to become a creator and earn money on Facebook,” the post said. “We introduced a simplified product called Professional Mode designed for people who want to post publicly and grow a following, and it’s grown to over 100 million daily active users in 18 months.”

In addition, Facebook says it has changed its payout model to pay creators based on how well their content performs on the platform, “simplifying how creators earn and expanding monetization opportunities to all formats — photos, videos and text.”

The news comes on the heels of reports that another social media platform, TikTok, had lowered the threshold to join its affiliate program from 5,000 followers to 1,000. As noted here in May, this is a move designed to let more creators make money by collecting commissions on the sales they generate when they post videos promoting products available in the TikTok Shop.

Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that these platforms are targeting a generation that is saving more of their income, percentage-wise, than other age groups — while also dealing with fewer emergency expenses.

“This may be creating a false sense of security. The combination of being able to save more while dealing with less unexpected costs may paint a prettier picture than reality can support,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

“Most Gen Z consumers have yet to land well-paying jobs or established careers, so they earn less, and 6 in 10 live paycheck to paycheck. Should their safety net of shared rent be taken away, their resulting lack of spending power could leave them particularly vulnerable.”

The post Facebook Records Highest Young Adult Use in Three Years appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The new Meta Advisory Group will meet periodically with Meta’s management team, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (May 22).

The group will be composed of four executives: Patrick Collison, CEO and co-founder of Stripe; Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub; Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify; and Charlie Songhurst, an investor and former executive at Microsoft, according to the report.

The members of the Meta Advisory Group will not be paid and will offer their insights and recommendations on technological advancements, innovation and strategic growth opportunities, the report said.

Unlike Meta’s board of directors, the members of the advisory group are not elected by shareholders and do not have a fiduciary duty to the company, per the report.

The creation of the Meta Advisory Group comes as Meta aims to strengthen its focus on AI-focused products, according to the report. This includes hardware devices like virtual reality headsets and smart glasses, as well as software products such as Meta’s AI assistant, which is available to consumers through various apps.

During Meta’s recent earnings call, Zuckerberg expressed optimism and ambition in the field of AI, stating that the company has the potential to become the leading AI company in the world, per the report.

Zuckerberg also emphasized the need for patience, as many of Meta’s AI efforts may not yield immediate financial returns, the report said. The company faces competition from rivals like Google, Microsoft and startup Anthropic in the race to develop AI models that can drive the next generation of tech products.

While it is unclear how often the Meta Advisory Group will meet, Zuckerberg mentioned that the group will advise Meta’s management team periodically moving forward, per the report.

During Meta’s earnings call held April 24, Zuckerberg brought up AI and the metaverse with the first minute of the call.

The company’s earnings released that day showed that Meta plans to spend $5 billion more than it initially forecasted developing new AI products for consumers, developers, businesses and hardware manufacturers.

Meta’s announcement of its $35 billion investment in AI signaled an aggressive push in the escalating tech arms race, setting new precedents for how tech giants capitalize on advancements in this technology.

The post Mark Zuckerberg Forms Advisory Council to Inform Meta’s AI Efforts appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman and CEO of Meta, which owns the text-based social media app, announced the test in a Thursday (May 16) post on Threads.

This feature is currently available only to members of a test group, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

It allows users to pin as many as 100 feeds to their home page so that they can easily jump to those from people they follow, those recommended by the Threads algorithm, or those based on keywords or topics they have specified, according to the report.

The “pinned columns” feature is similar to TweetDeck, a column-based social media tool that has since been changed into X Pro, TechCrunch reported Thursday.

The report added that while TweetDeck-like tools are available for Bluesky and Mastodon, this is the first such tool for Threads.

X Pro, the renamed tool that used to be TweetDeck, transitioned to a subscriber-only feature in August 2023 and is now available only to members of the X Premium service.

TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter, which is now X, in 2011 due to its popularity among users. The tool allows users to view and customize multiple feeds in real time.

Zuckerberg said on April 24 that Threads is “growing well” and now has more than 150 million monthly active users.

Meta launched Threads in more than 100 countries on July 5, 2023, saying it would take what Meta’s Instagram does best and apply that to text. In the first seven hours after its debut, Threads gained 10 million signups.

“There are now more than 150 million monthly actives, and it continues to generally be on the trajectory I hoped to see,” Zuckerberg said in April during Meta’s quarterly earnings call.

In another recent addition to the platform, it was reported in April that Meta had begun a limited-time, invitation-only bonus program that lets creators earn money on the content they post on Threads.

Among the requirements listed on a Meta support page for the program is one saying that a post must receive at least 2,500 views. Those who are invited to participate in the program will receive a pop-up notification and invite.

The post Threads Testing ‘Pinned Columns’ Feature on Web Application appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The platform will continue working as usual until Aug. 31, 2025, when it will stop functioning, and users will be able to view and download their data until May 31, 2026, according to an email the company sent to PYMNTS.

“We are discontinuing Workplace from Meta so we can focus on building AI and metaverse technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape the way we work,” a Meta spokesperson said in the email. “Over the next two years, we will provide our Workplace customers the option to transition to Zoom’s Workvivo product, Meta’s only preferred migration partner.”

Workplace was designed for work interactions and aimed to compete with Slack and other workplace productivity tools, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (May 14).

The office collaboration tool was launched at the end of 2016. It aimed to gain market share in the office collaboration space at a time when — though Facebook had long set its sights on the business market — its product offerings resonated more with consumers.

Meta reported in a May 2021 blog post that Workplace had 7 million subscribers at that time, a figure that was up more than 40% from a year earlier.

The company said at the time that with the continuing prevalence of remote work, many employers were looking to create employee-centered positive experiences, regardless of where people work and live.

“Business leaders are acknowledging that truly connecting with people in remote or hybrid working environments is business-critical,” Meta said in the post. “We believe this growth is an indicator that more companies are thinking about how to build communities at work.”

During Meta’s most recent earnings call, which was held April 24, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse were front and center.

“We’re building a number of different AI services, from our AI assistant to augmented reality apps and glasses, to APIs [application programming interfaces] that help creators engage their communities and that fans can interact with, to business APIs that we think every business eventually on our platform will use.”

The post Meta to Phase Out Workplace Over Next 2 Years appeared first on PYMNTS.com.