🍪 Meta's metaverse struggles

Top of the mornin’ to ya, friends. Welcome to Bite Sized Beta, where we give you your daily scoop of knowledge with a heaping side of memes.

We got a nice feast for ya this week, so let’s get to it.

In the oven this week:

  • 🤷🏻‍♂️ Meta’s metaverse is too meta, even for employees

  • 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 8 bite-sized treats

  • 🗳 Poll of the week

  • 🍫 Chocolate chips: 5 fun finds

  • 😂 Snickerdoodles: weekend memes

FRESHLY BAKED

META’S META STRUGGLES

Sometimes it sounds nice to be a billionaire. Imagine what you could do with 10 million 100 dollar bills: use it as toilet paper, light it on fire, make the world’s most expensive paper mache, the possibilities are endless! 

But then we look at Zuck these days and think, eh, maybe we’ll stick with being poor. 

Because man, it's been a rough year for our guy Zuck. 

Meta's stock down over 60%, layoffs are rolling in, and he’s personally lost $75 billion in net worth this year. Not to mention he's the most meme-able tech CEO, no matter what he does.

Now he’s got a new problem. Horizon Worlds, its metaverse, is just not taking off. 

It’s supposed to be a set of virtual worlds where people can game, party, shop, work, you name it. But leaked internal docs show that there aren’t any girls at the Hot Girl Summer Rooftop Pool Party, and in Murder Village there’s no one to kill. 

It’s as barren as our bank accounts in this economy.

They originally set a goal of getting to 500K monthly active users by the end of the year, but the current tally is less than 200K, with most users ditching the app after the first month.

Even 58% of Meta employees say they don’t understand the metaverse strategy. 

It's gotten so bad the company is now mandating that employees use Quest headsets to have meetings in the metaverse.

And what do employees have to say? 

Our take?

For Meta, the struggle is actually meta. It basically has to make the metaverse work, because Facebook’s popularity is sliding downhill, Apple’s taking chunks out of its ads business, and it’s gonna need a new revenue source eventually. 

Not to mention, you know, the whole name change thing. 

It’s not new news that Meta struggles when it comes to new product innovation. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride, but we’re stayin’ here to spectate.

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED TREATS

The number 1 app on the Apple App Store charts this week is an app called Gas, which prompts teens to say nice things about one another anonymously. Funny thing is, it was started by the same guy who started TBH, an identical app that was bought by Meta in 2017 😂 Talk about replicating success... 

Hired (job matching platform) came out with its 2022 tech salary report and it’s juicy. Eng managers make a salary of $196K on average, beating out any other tech role by a long shot. It's time to sign up for an engineering bootcamp, guys. 

Apple is releasing a new entry level iPad they're calling "the iPad". Yeah, and Bite Sized Beta will now be called "the Newsletter.”

Kanye is buying Parler, the conservative right wing social network, so that he can never be silenced again (he got briefly banned on Twitter & IG this week for anti-semetic comments). Price wasn’t disclosed, but Parler has raised ~$56 million to date. 👀 Seems like the billionaire thing to do these days.. 

a16z launches a new accelerator, Crypto Startup School. It comes with a $500k investment, mentorship, and a network of other founders & investors. This cohort starts in LA next March.

In Korea, even BTS has to go to the army. The K-pop group is heading off to the military to satisfy the country's requirement that all men serve at least 18 months in the army by age 28. They'll reunite as a group "around 2025."

You know Google’s endless tirade against Apple's blue bubbles? Well, now Zuck is getting in on the beef, taking shots at iMessage in his latest promo for WhatsApp’s encrypted messaging.

Uber Eats is now delivering marijuana in Toronto for people 19 years and older. Meanwhile on the other side of the house.. Lyft is now increasing its service fees for riders 😑

POLL OF THE WEEK

TECH SALARIES

Which city had the highest local tech salary increase this last year?

Take your vote! 👇🏽 No peeking.

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Answer’s at the bottom of this email.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

5 FUN FINDS

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES  

ANSWER

Philadelphia, with an 11.9% increase in base salaries between 2021-22. The SF Bay Area still led overall salaries though ($174K on average) 🙄

Review of the week:

Long live the meme degens!

Drop us a review 👇🏽 and we might feature yours next week! 

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