For the first time in its history, Facebook is in decline. Has the tech giant begun to crumble? | John Naughton

As long as the number of users kept growing, Mark Zuckerberg felt able to ride out scandals and criticism. He can no longer rely on that defence

Facebook was much in the news last week, although you may not realise that because it has been renamed Meta in the hope the bad vibes associated with its maiden name would gradually fade from public memory. (Google tried the same stunt with Alphabet and that hasn't worked either.)

For a change, though, Facebook's latest moment at the top of the news agenda had nothing to do with scandals and everything to do with its financial results, which were so unexpectedly bad that the shares dropped 25% at one point, taking $240bn (177bn) off its market value, which in turn led to a 2% drop in the Nasdaq index.

Continue reading...