Meta's "Oops" Moment

Well, well, well. We meet again. I suppose it's only fair that we explain where we've been these past few weeks, orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, we could just jump right into it — which is exactly what we're going to do. 😎

It's 2023! And what better way to start the year than to see what <enter tech celebrity name here> has been up to. So of course, we need to start from the top: Papa Zuck's Facebook.

2022 might not have been Facebook's year (but neither was it any other tech company's), yet the social media titan continues to dominate HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings, landing — you guessed it — at the #1 spot.

The ranking could have something to do with revelations that Facebook has children's personal information, but who's to say? What we can tell you however is that Facebook's parent Meta is having its "oops" moment.

Having convinced U.S. lawmakers that China's TikTok, and by extension the country itself, was bad for American democracy, Papa Zuck is beginning to realize that his company's push into hardware is highly dependent on the Asian nation's production capabilities. As a result, lowering the company's reliance on "Made in China" virtual reality headsets, such as the Meta Quest Pro, in favor of "Made in Taiwan" or "Made in Italy" has become a real headache as existing supply chains simply do not favor such a transition for a myriad of reasons, The Washington Post reports.

But that might be the least of Zuckerberg's problems. Consumers aren't even really into the whole VR headset shabang, with CNBC reporting that sales of said headsets declined 2.2% year-over-year in the U.S. to about $1.1 billion as of early December. So much for Cyber Monday sales.

Maybe that's why legendary developer John Carmack has decided to say his good-byes, opting to leave Meta/Facebook and leaving Papa Zuck to figure out the whole VR business instead.

Meta ranked #43 in this week's Tech Company Rankings. It's stock price though..

Bankman-Fried? More Like Bankman-Freed 👺

Okay, okay. One could argue that being out on a $250 million bail doesn't exactly constitute "freedom", but it certainly beats being in jail.

Having been extradited to the U.S., the once-billionaire owner of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange plans to plead not guilty to criminal charges that he cheated investors and looted billions of dollars, Reuters reported. The SBF legal saga is going to take a very long time (perhaps even years) to reach its conclusion, but we'll keep you updated.

For context, it took nearly four years for a federal grand jury to indict former biotechnology entrepreneur and once billionaire Elizabeth Holmes on charges related to deceiving investors.

Somebody Give Musk a Break!

2022 wasn't kind to Elon Musk, regardless of how often the billionaire flexed his muscles.

From the Twitter saga all the way to liquidating more and more of his Tesla stock, the once world's richest man is said to have become the first person in the planet's history to erase $200 billion from his net worth, Bloomberg reports. Musk fans need not worry, however. Musk is still...billionaire rich. Just not as rich as before.

While the jury is still out on whether Musk still thinks the Twitter acquisition was worth it, at least one big name Twitter investor has marked down their investment in the social media company by more than half. According to Reuters, Fidelity now values its stake in Twitter at nearly $8.63 million as of Nov. 30, down from $19.66 million at October end.

Twitter ranked #25 this week.

In Other News..📰

• "The Bankrupt Business of 2022" is our favorite pick for a year-in-review video detailing some of the major events that took place last year.
• The video game industry's worst-kept secret, the Nintendo Switch Pro, was indeed something Nintendo was working on but decided to scrap, perhaps over fears that it wouldn't sell very well, Digital Foundry noted in a recent podcast.
• Speaking of video games, FromSoftware's Elden Ring was crowned the best video game of 2022 by multiple publications out in the world wide web.
• Binance's $1 billion acquisition of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital has hit a snag. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, ranked #47 this week.

And that's a wrap! Or at least, that's what we would have said had we not wanted to explain our absence.

The truth is, it was just life and year-end shenanigans that we had to deal with as we capped the year 2022. But not to worry! We're resuming our previously interrupted schedule, so see y'all next week. In the meantime, tell us about your 2022.

PEACE! ☮️