duud

Your’s didn’t look right…

Cattle trafficking in Central America

There was plenty of snark when the Meta rebrand was announced and there has been even more since the Q4 earnings bloodbath. It will seem genius in five years. That it was announced following a (non) scandal makes it all the more impressive.

The comparisons to Altria and Alphabet are way off

• Meta got the .com
• Meta got the $META ticker
• Meta is meaningful

Alphabet doesn’t own the .com and Altria doesn’t own the ticker

Alphabet is vaguely meaningful: the company has many products/services (one for each letter) and a propensity to make alpha bets (good investments). Most customers likely won’t see that connection. Altria is reportedly derived from the Latin word for high. That may be relevant for their growing cannabis business but again, most customers won’t know/care.

Meta, on the other hand, is the best possible abbreviation of the hype train that is the metaverse. Coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 masterpiece Snowcrash, Wikipedia describes the metaverse as “a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.” That seems like a pretty good fit for the owner of the world’s most popular social networks and most popular VR platform.

What’s more, it didn’t make sense to continue associating the entire company with its most stagnant product. Instagram, WhatsApp and Quest (Oculus) are arguably more important to the future of the company and are less associated with fake news, election interference, racist relatives, etc.

Talking heads will continue to do what talking heads do. Zuck will continue to do what he has done since 2004; execute like Henry VIII.

Malta has the fastest growing population of any country?

Vladimir Putin on woke culture.

Update 14/4/22: Lol probably deserved but also kind of ironic that a of a video of Putin criticising woke culture is blocked.

• Costs roughly 10x cocaine per gram
• Less associated with Escobar etc?
• Status symbol, Veblen good?
• Reggaeton/trap influence?
• More in depth analysis by InsightCrime

I couldn’t have timed my $FB investment any better.

Some thoughts:

• Haugen will likely get a better deal than Assange and Snowden
• Think of the children! 40% said they felt better using Instagram
• Opportunistic seems as good an adjective as brave

The story is overblown but I will probably hold off on buying more stock for now. It will be good value at the bottom.

Not investment advice.

• Marketplace has many multiples the monthly active users of eBay
• Shops combined with Marketplace could squeeze out Amazon and Shopify
• Digital products are increasingly important and Oculus is awesome
• Probably trades at a discount due to recent bad press (old media jealous)
• P/E ratio lower than the rest of FAANG, Nike, Disney and many others

Good guy, bad domain.

If you regularly call the same department at a company that uses an automated assistant menu (press 1 for sales, press 2 for tech support, etc), try this trick on Android and iPhone.

Dial the number and then a comma for each extension

e.g. +15707088788,4,2 takes you straight to the domain name tech support department at Network Solutions.

• +15707088788 is the international customer service number
• 4 is the first menu option (tech support)
• 2 is the next menu option (domain names).

ht psimyn