Although you might believe that we meant to say ‘Meta,’ no, we meant Facebook, which is a division of Meta.

According to Techcrunch, Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B in Q1 – but the 2030s will be ‘exciting’ and damn the torpedoes. Make no mistake about it and according to Input, Mark Zuckerberg is hell-bent on the metaverse — and getting you to work in VR, pointing out that “The Facebook CEO…sees it as the “successor to the mobile internet”…The big question is if anyone will follow Zuckerberg into the metaverse.”

Certainly not Sheryl Sandberg. According to the Wall Street Journal, “One of the world’s most powerful executives became increasingly burned out and disconnected from the mega-business she was instrumental in building. That dovetailed with a company investigation into her activities.

“Meta’s investigation has been going on since “at least last fall” WSJ’s sources explained, and “a number of employees have been interviewed” in the probe,” Town Hall reported:

“It includes an examination of the work Facebook employees did to support her foundation, Lean In, which advocates for women in the workplace, as well as the writing and promotion of her second book “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy,” which focused on her grieving process following the sudden death of her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, in 2015, the people said.

“The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the investigation included a review of Ms. Sandberg’s use of corporate resources to help plan her coming wedding. That is a small piece of the investigation, according to the people familiar with the matter, who said it involves a broader review of Ms. Sandberg’s personal use of Facebook’s resources over many years.”

The Lean In Movement/Foundation? That was 2013.

 

Surely Facebook and its legal team knew about her piercing the corporate veil long before now, and odd timing, what, eh?

 

Then there were the many scandals that plagued her during her tenure as COO, as the International Business Times enumerated. The Daily Mail row, when ” Sandberg came under fire for allegedly coercing the Daily Mail to drop a news story on her former boyfriend Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. Daily Mail‘s digital version, MailOnline had plans to report on a restraining order filed against Kotick in 2014 by an ex-girlfriend which prompted Sandberg to reach out to the British tabloid.

Her investigation into George Soros, a shareholder critical of Facebook: “Sandberg’s conclusion was that Soros was possibly holding a short position on Facebook and intended to make financial gains from attacking the company.” But never a good idea to look too closely into longtime spearhead of the globalist movement George Soros, trust us.

“Sandberg was personally at the center of the damning Cambridge Analytica scandal. More generally, Sandberg was routinely criticized for the spread of misinformation aided by Facebook,” said IBTImes.

There’s also the fact that Zuckerberg is no longer the neophyte he was when he needed the more experienced Sandberg as his second in command.  That she “wasn’t ‘eager’ to tackle Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse project “not least because it doesn’t directly entail the use of her core strengths in building advertising businesses,” according to Town Hall. And that Sandberg has not been seen much publicly since the corporate name change.

Do note that the structure of the company and chain of reporting will change with Sandberg’s exit and Zuckerberg will not be sharing power quite the way he has in the past with the incoming COO. Maybe that was in the cards anyway, and another reason for Sandberg’s departure.

You still must wonder why the company waited nearly ten years before deciding to lean into the piercing the corporate veil trigger…

We’re also moving beyond Web 2.0 and the Age of Social, which was clearly Facebook’s bailiwick, and entering a phase that’s more community/interests driven, from what can see so far. While it does cater to that as well, ‘Facebook’ also comes with a lot of baggage. In fact, Facebook, Now Meta, Hit With 8 Suits Claiming Its Algorithms Hook Youth and Ruin Lives, Bloomberg reported just this past week, including some filed by parents who claimed their children took their own lives.

As we’ve mentioned before, ‘Meta’ means ‘death’ in Hebrew, and Facebook’s might be somewhat in the cards as Zuckerberg keeps an unwavering focus on the metaverse and the bounty that 2030 will bring. Not sure what it will look like and considering that it took Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs 8000 words in an explainer he recently penned to basically simply promise that it will change the world for the better and that Meta won’t build a dedicated metaverse after all, as Inputmag reported, we wondered what’s not being said.

Still, the answer is the question is no, Facebook is not imploding. But the focus is shifting and will continue to do so considering that this just in: AI is now sentient (Google engineer warns the firm’s AI is sentient: Suspended employee claims computer programme acts ‘like a 7 or 8-year-old’ and reveals it told him shutting it off ‘would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot’) and last month, Meta opened its language model to academics, civil society and government organizations. And we know that Facebook received early funding from the CIA and NSA, so we can only guess as to which ‘government orgs’ that might be. So, it’s no wonder that Zuckerberg is all in on the metaverse and that the focus won’t necessarily be advertising – again, her superpower – and that Sandberg is out The plot does thicken, but that’s an editorial unto itself – coming soon.

 

Not that one should consider Sandberg yesterday’s headlines. She seems to always have something happening off in the wings, considering first Lean In and then Option B. Love her or hate her, she was second in command at one of the most seminal companies of the Web 2.0 era. We don’t doubt that Sandberg will be back and could be that the third one’s the charm. The real heads up is Zuckerberg and his assurance of ‘changing the world for the better.’ Since we know what his assurances brought his first time around, we’re not quite comforted as he marches steadfastly towards his own Face Two, as we ourselves go onward and forward.