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VOICE ARCHIVE

Kurt Wagner

@kurtwag8
35 posts
2025-04-16
New/Fun: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram into its own standalone company in 2018 A major reason: he felt Instagram was harming the Facebook social network, and spinning off IG would let them both grow without having to try and strategically work together in the same way https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2025-04-16 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Sources: Meta offered $450M in late March to settle the FTC's antitrust case and raised its offer to ~$1B as the trial neared; the FTC had demanded $30B

The FTC wanted $30 billion to drop its case.  Zuckerberg offered much less and hoped Trump would back him up.

New/Fun: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram into its own standalone company in 2018 A major reason: he felt Instagram was harming the Facebook social network, and spinning off IG would let them both grow without having to try and strategically work together in the same way https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2025-04-16 View on X
Bloomberg

FTC v. Meta: in an email, Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that its success was hurting Facebook

meaning show people more ads — as a way to make more money and take some pressure off Facebook  —  Perhaps not surprisingly, IG's founders left the company a few months after all o...

2025-01-25
All of this crazy AI spending at Meta and other places reminds me of this Zuckerberg quote from last summer.  Everyone is likely overspending by billions of dollars on AI.  But better safe than sorry. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2025-01-25 View on X
Reuters

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is planning to invest $60B to $65B in capex in 2025, will end the year with 1.3M+ GPUs, and plans to grow its AI teams “significantly”

Market: WE LOVE AI, DO AI THING  —  META: Sure thing, ploughing $40bn into capex this year  —  Market: wait not like that  —  First time we've seen a negative market reaction to th...

Why Japan?  Japan was always Twitter's second largest market.  Speculating here but I imagine if Twitter was big in Japan, then Threads is also big in Japan
2025-01-25 View on X
TechCrunch

Meta begins a “limited, early test” of ads in Threads in the US and Japan, with the goal of making the ads “as interesting as organic content”

Threads is officially getting ads  —  https://www.theverge.com/...  #Threads #Meta #Ads #SocialMedia #Tech  —  [image] Threads: Adam Mosseri / @mosseri : We're starting a small tes...

2025-01-18
Several very senior women from Meta, including formers like Sheryl Sandberg, are coming out in defense of Zuckerberg today after his “masculine energy” comments and the NYT story These are all from the last few hours
2025-01-18 View on X
Engadget

Zuckerberg says there's a “bogus narrative saying I blamed Sheryl for a bunch of stuff” and he was just addressing the origin of “bring your whole self to work”

Well, specifically, they want me to know.  —  On Thursday, The New York Times published a lengthy story …

2024-12-17
First time I recall seeing a daily active users number for Threads.  For comparison, Twitter was at 238m DAU the last time it reported public numbers in mid-2022.  Of course, Twitter was 16 years old.  Threads is like 16 months old.
2024-12-17 View on X
The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads now has 100M+ DAUs, revealing its DAU figure for the first time, and 300M+ MAUs, up from 275M+ MAUs in November 2024

It's a notable milestone not just because it's a big number; it's also the first time Meta has a daily active user figure publicly.

2024-12-07
NEW: An appeals court in DC upheld a U.S. law that would ban TikTok starting in January.  The company had hoped the court would strike down the law.  Not happening.  TikTok needs to find some other way to survive (perhaps the Supreme Court?) https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2024-12-07 View on X
Bloomberg

TikTok users shouldn't count on Trump to save the app, as his stance has been inconsistent and the app's existence brings little upside for him post-election

One of Trump's first important decisions could be to deprive Gen Z of its favorite app.  —  A federal appeals court ruling …

NEW: An appeals court in DC upheld a U.S. law that would ban TikTok starting in January.  The company had hoped the court would strike down the law.  Not happening.  TikTok needs to find some other way to survive (perhaps the Supreme Court?) https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2024-12-07 View on X
Wall Street Journal

TikTok still faces a US ban if not sold by January 19, after a federal appeals court ruled that Congress has the power to take action to protect US interests

Divest-or-Sell Order Slated to Go Into Effect Next Month Forbes : Sources: Tim Cook and senior Apple execs have been discussing how best to respond to potential TikTok ban, concedi...

2024-12-06
NEW: An appeals court in DC upheld a U.S. law that would ban TikTok starting in January.  The company had hoped the court would strike down the law.  Not happening.  TikTok needs to find some other way to survive (perhaps the Supreme Court?) https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2024-12-06 View on X
Wall Street Journal

TikTok still faces a US ban if not sold by January 19, after a federal appeals court ruled that Congress has the power to take action to protect US interests

Panel rules Congress has the power to shut down Chinese-backed app in the U.S. because of national security concerns

2024-11-05
Here is the full list of US government contractors using Llama, according to Meta: Accenture Amazon Web Services Anduril (Palmer Luckey) Booz Allen Databricks Deloitte IBM Leidos Lockheed Martin Microsoft (major OpenAI investor) Oracle Palantir Scale AI Snowflake
2024-11-05 View on X
TechCrunch

Meta confirms it has made Llama models available for US national security applications, with partners like Anduril, Booz Allen, and Lockheed Martin using Llama

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :

It's also framing this decision as a chance to better compete with other AI competitors/threats, like those coming out of China.  “We believe it is in both America and the wider democratic world's interest for American open source models to excel and succeed over models from China and elsewhere.” …
2024-11-05 View on X
TechCrunch

Meta confirms it has made Llama models available for US national security applications, with partners like Anduril, Booz Allen, and Lockheed Martin using Llama

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :

New: Meta is opening its AI models to US defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen.  The models are “open source,” which means they are already free, but Meta has rules against using them for things like “military, warfare, nuclear industries and espionage” It's making an exception for US defense agencies and contractors as part of a plan to gain further adoption for Llama
2024-11-05 View on X
TechCrunch

Meta confirms it has made Llama models available for US national security applications, with partners like Anduril, Booz Allen, and Lockheed Martin using Llama

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :

2024-10-31
Threads Monthly users: April - 150m July - 175m Aug - 200m Oct - “almost” 275m That's a lot of growth in one year (even if they are pushing Threads to people in IG)
2024-10-31 View on X
Meta Investor Relations

Meta reports Q3 revenue up 19% YoY to $40.59B, net income up 35% YoY to $15.69B, and family daily active people up 5% YoY to 3.29B on average for September 2024

Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2024.

Threads Monthly users: April - 150m July - 175m Aug - 200m Oct - “almost” 275m That's a lot of growth in one year (even if they are pushing Threads to people in IG)
2024-10-31 View on X
Engadget

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has almost 275M MAUs and is adding more than a million sign ups per day, while Meta AI has passed 500M MAUs in less than a year

RE: https://www.threads.net/... Kurt Wagner / @kurtwag8 : Threads Monthly users: April - 150m July - 175m Aug - 200m Oct - “almost” 275m That's a lot of growth in one year (even if...

2024-09-24
New: a lawyer representing more than 2k former Twitter employees emailed the group today that they won the first official arbitration case related to unpaid severance.  “The arbitrator awarded the full severance package...and hope it foreshadows more good news to come,” she wrote. …
2024-09-24 View on X
Bloomberg

Memo: a US arbitrator awards a full severance package to a former Twitter employee who was laid off when Musk took over, a possible precedent for 2K+ complaints

Elon Musk lost a legal fight over unpaid severance to a former Twitter employee who was laid off when he took over the social media platform …

As you might imagine, this could end up being very expensive for X. Perhaps unrelated: Musk decided to comply with legal orders in Brazil to get X reinstated there on Friday, the same day as the arbitration decision.
2024-09-24 View on X
Bloomberg

Memo: a US arbitrator awards a full severance package to a former Twitter employee who was laid off when Musk took over, a possible precedent for 2K+ complaints

Elon Musk lost a legal fight over unpaid severance to a former Twitter employee who was laid off when he took over the social media platform …

A Microsoft employee tried Meta's Ray-Ban sunglasses a few years ago and sent the company a long list of suggested fixes.  So Meta hired her, and now she's in charge of the Ray-Bans - and Meta's other AR glasses.  Meet Li-Chen Miller, a self described “crazy cat lady,” and the head of product for Meta's wearables division. https://www.bloomberg.com/... w/ @aisha.counts
2024-09-24 View on X
Bloomberg

A profile of Li-Chen Miller, Meta VP of product for wearables and a former Microsoft CVP; IDC says Meta has shipped 700K+ Ray-Ban units after the 2023 launch

Bloomberg :

2024-08-03
So Trump claims Mark Zuckerberg has called him multiple times over the past few weeks: First after the assassination attempt to praise him, then again this week to apologize that Meta's automated content systems accidentally labeled a picture of Trump as false.  Interesting relationship developing here given all the history...
2024-08-03 View on X
The Verge

Trump says Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt and told Trump he wouldn't endorse a Democrat because he “respected” Trump's reaction that day

Former President Donald Trump has expressed a newfound fondness for Mark Zuckerberg after years of railing against him.

2024-08-01
Zuckerberg says Meta is already building Llama 4, and suggested it will come out next year.  He says it will require 10x the amount of compute power compared to what they used for Llama 3.
2024-08-01 View on X
Meta

Meta reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $39B, net income up 73% to $13.5B, and family daily active people up 7% to 3.27B on average for June 2024; META jumps 5%+

Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.

2024-07-14
After Facebook/IG brought Trump back on early last year, they did so with a threat of “heightened penalties.”  That meant another rules violation, even a minor one, would lead to another month(s)-long suspension Those “heightened penalties” have been removed. …
2024-07-14 View on X
Axios

Meta says it will soon roll back restrictions on Donald Trump's Instagram and Facebook accounts to ensure parity among candidates ahead of the 2024 election

It's making the change to ensure parity among presidential candidates leading up to the 2024 election More on @axios https://www.axios.com/... Forums: r/technology : Exclusive: Met...