It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to step down

Mark Zuckerberg should resign. He should resign his position as CEO of Meta and let someone else manage Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Next, he should use his immense wealth and connections to the venture capital world to launch a startup that can bring his metaverse idea to life.

I think this is the only way Zuckerberg can save his empire from himself. This, not to mention that it would also be the best thing for society.

On Tuesday, we got another clear signal that Zuckerberg needs to change gears. Meta held a conference called Meta Connect to, in theory, show off all the cool stuff Meta developers have been able to build in the metaverse. These kinds of demos are supposed to convince people that the metaverse is a place they’ll eventually want to go. It must also convince investors that Zuckerberg’s huge investment in this new technology is worth it.

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What has the company announced to convince us tired and jaded Internet users that the $1,500 headset that connects us to Zuckerberg’s metaverse is worth it? ¡LEGS! Avatars with legs! You have legs! And your avatar has legs too! Yes, the big reveal was that the company’s metaverse platform avatars will now have legs, as they were previously limited to floating torsos. Zuckerberg was so excited about the legs who jumped for joy when talking about them. Now your avatar will be able to do the same I guess.

I wish the rest of the world shared Zuckerberg’s excitement. Last year, Meta spent $10 billion developing the metaverse, but has little to show for it: In February, it revealed that it only 300,000 users connected monthly to its Horizon Worlds platform, a tiny amount compared to the 2.9 billion who do the same on Facebook. Clearly Wall Street is watching this whole project with a raised eyebrow: Meta shares are down 60% so far this year.

Zuckerberg already has two very profitable platforms, Facebook and Instagram, but their popularity is declining. At the end of last year, for the first time, the Facebook user base decreased. Both platforms have been losing young eyes in favor of TikTok and older eyes in favor of greater awareness of mental health issues. Fixing this problem requires attention, innovation, and hard work that Zuckerberg seems to have little interest in. So he should leave that job to someone more committed and competent and bring his metaverse show to the startup world.

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Meta is now facing the harshest headwinds of her life. The economy is likely headed for the first global recession since Facebook went public in 2012. Rising interest rates and a strong dollar are weighing on the results of tech companies.

Apple’s privacy measures have also limited the ability of Facebook and Instagram to collect lucrative information about users, a change that Meta estimates will cost it $10 billion in ad revenue this year. And Americans in general find the company’s business model creepy. This has sent Meta into a panic: the company is said to be preparing a wave of quiet layoffs while canceling internship offers.

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Beyond current economic conditions, Meta faces existential threats to its core platforms. In just a decade, everything we thought we knew about social media has been turned upside down. Connecting the world or just catching up with high school classmates doesn’t seem like a fun idea anymore. Meta platforms have helped facilitate all kinds of corrosive behavior: insurrections, genocides and eating disorders.

Facebook burned society so badly that it gave algorithms a bad name in general. All this negativity is starting to dampen people’s enthusiasm. In February, Facebook reported its first decline in the number of active users worldwide, and while that figure has since picked up, there is real concern that wear and tear on its core apps could end up taking its toll. Zuckerberg said that Facebook “would move fast and break the situation“. And it has, but the problem is that, in its eagerness, it has also broken itself.

All of these problems require intense focus: on improving the company’s flagship products, on repairing its public image, on showing investors that the company’s business can survive the coming economic chaos. But Zuckerberg is not focused on the present. Instead, he is absorbed in what he sees as Meta’s future.

A visionary leader is great in times of intense growth, but Meta now needs a leader who can see the company clearly, someone who doesn’t carry the burden of being its founder.

If Bill Gates dared to leave Microsoft and Larry Page and Sergey Brin realized that the time had come to leave Google in someone else’s hands, Zuckerberg should be able to too.

A virtual land grab

Zuckerberg has always focused on total “mastery” of whatever field he finds himself in; that’s why he is totally enthralled with the control of the metaverse, down to the last detail. An article from New York Times suggests that, after someone mocked his old doll-like avatar from the metaverse, Zuckerberg became so obsessed with creating a new one that a graphic artist was forced to draw 40 versions of his face over a month before finally settling down. approved one.

According to employees explained to New York Times, Meta workers refer to metaverse projects as MMH projects. Make Mark Happy, make Mark happy). This type of micro management (small-scale management that, in English, represents the paradigm of a bad type of leadership) can serve a small business entrepreneur who works from his bedroom, but it won’t work for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company who has a lot of other issues to deal with.

If Zuckerberg wants to do micro management, a startup is the right place to do it. He could spin off the Horizon portion of Facebook and then seek venture capital money from all his billionaire friends. Many other big tech founders like Page and Brin, along with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Uber’s Travis Kalanick, have started passionate projects outside the four walls of their original companies.

And by making parts of the company’s metaverse private, Zuckerberg could build his new world stealthily, so he wouldn’t have to deal with millions of people obsessing over every little mishap and making fun of him for it.

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A startup would also give Zuckerberg more freedom to build on his vision by acquiring other companies. Right now, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is watching Meta like a hawk. It’s no secret that the agency’s new regulators, who have given it renewed impetus, think the company is too big and that Facebook’s approvals of the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were mistakes.

In fact, the FTC is already suing Meta for its attempt to acquire a virtual reality fitness company, a lawsuit that Meta has said is “based on ideology, not evidence.” If Zuckerberg wants to go shopping to help scale his metaverse-related ambitions, he has to do it outside the constraints of his current company.

In all the talk that Zuckerberg gives about the metaverse, he makes it clear that he believes it is possible that Facebook and Instagram may not be saved and that, therefore, he has left them for dead like an old email address from hotmail.com, plagued by spam. and clogged with messages so old they’re not even worth opening anymore.

You may think these platforms are too unwieldy without the winds of popularity pushing at your back.. Perhaps Zuckerberg doesn’t want to continue on Facebook and Instagram because the work that needs to be done to get them both off the ground is not what he likes to do. And that’s fine.

But if that’s the case, you should quit.