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Zuckerberg loses almost $17 Billion as Facebook shares plunge – investors looking to force him out



Zuckerberg loses almost $17 Billion as Facebook shares plunge-- investors looking to force him out If you’re looking for someone to blame all of Facebook’s current woes on its painfully obvious political bias, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Certainly, it’s clear that the decision to send conservative folks like oh, let’s say, Herman Cain to the social media black hole isn’t helping- but it’s important to remember there are other factors at play. The once-omnipresent site has become less and less important as it fills its users’ feeds with ads and mysteriously irrelevant gobbledygook. Finding the stuff you actually want to see, even if it’s if it’s not buried for containing ‘dangerous’ conservative ideas, has become a challenge. If you’re like most users, these days you’re seeing less of the people and topics you actually follow, and much more sponsored garbage you couldn’t care less about.
Whatever the reason, be it politics, tedium, or fatigue, people just aren’t on the site as much as they used to be. In March we learned that
Now new numbers have been released that go through December, and the problem only seems to be getting worse. The updated data shows that Facebook’s core platform lost 18% in time spent, which is a huge change from the month before. This, says Pivotal, reflects a 24% decline in time spent per person.”
Mark Zuckerberg has done his best to spin this as a positive. In terms of societal impact, he may well be right. In a business sense? Well… From that Magazine you remember reading in the 80’s, Newsweek:
Shares in the California-based social-networking platform plummeted by as much as 24 percent following the filing this week, swiftly wiping up to $140 billion from the company’s market value. According to the Financial Times, the freefall was one of the largest after-market drops ever. In terms of revenue, the website hit $13.2 billion, which was compared to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of $13.3 billion. Some user metrics also appeared sluggish. While Facebook spun it as an increase of 11 percent year-over-year, the amount of global daily active users (DAUs) was 1.47 billion, while market analysts had estimated 1.49 billion, CNBC said. It missed ad revenue predictions, posting $13.04 billion compared with estimates of $13.16 billion. In a conference call after the posting, Zuckerberg, 34, described it as a “solid quarter.”

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That may not sound like a huge problem, but the stock drop translates to a $16.8 Billion personal loss for the Zuck – at least on paper. Now, some big-league Facebook investors are disagreeing with his “solid quarter” assessment. Last year 51% of independent investors voted to relieve Zuckerberg of command. Since then, we’ve been hearing rumors of various factions within the Facebook structure becoming more and more dissatisfied with Zuck’s leadership. Today, it looks like there’s a new effort to push him out. Via Fortune:
Investors are holding Mark Zuckerberg’s feet to the fire on the heels of a disappointing earnings report that caused shares to crater in after-hour trading Wednesday, with one drawing up a proposal that the social media site’s founder be removed as chairman. Trillium Asset Management, an activist investor that has tangled with Zuckerberg before, is leading the charge, filing the proposal hours after the earnings report, citing the company’s “mishandling” of several crises, including Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trillium holds an $11 million stake in Facebook. It began advocating for the company to split the chairman and CEO roles last month. Last October, it submitted a proposal to establish a risk oversight committee within Facebook’s board to guard against fake news, among other issues.
There are two things to keep in mind here. The first is that Zuckerberg’s shares in the company grant him a majority of the voting power. So, the odds are that – just like last year – he’s not going anywhere. The second is that Trillium Asset Management proudly boasts that it “integrates Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) factors into the investment process.” One might assume then, that they have little interest in alleviating the site’s current political biases. Still, it’s clear that people within the Facebook structure have realized they have a problem on their hands. …One wonders if they have any idea how to fix it.


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