Mark Zuckerberg 20-year formula for success has expired

Meta cannot copy or acquire its way to another two decades of prosperity.

- Dave Lee

The other day, I did something I haven't done for years. I browsed Facebook. By which I mean: I really took a look around. Good grief, what a mess! It's like walking round an abandoned amusement park of badly executed ideas.

Can you name a single person who's found love through Facebook Dating, which was meant to challenge Tinder? Is anyone viewing Facebook Watch, a supposed rival to Netflix? How about the Facebook Gaming portal, once billed as its foray into cloud gaming and an effort to take on streamer platforms Twitch and YouTube? Today, it's littered with low-rent titles offering little more to the player than your typical fruit machine.

Even some of the more popular ideas must be shared with warning labels - scammers are everywhere on Facebook Marketplace.

Fortunately for Mr Mark Zuckerberg, the barnstorming success of other parts of Meta Platforms the rebranding of the business meant to reflect his vision of the future means its duds can hide out within the comically cluttered navigation menu on the main Facebook app.

Besides, for 20 years, use of the main Facebook service - known as the "Blue" app internally - has remained remarkably resilient. It attracted 3.07 billion monthly active users as at last quarter, the company said. Though, tellingly, Meta said it would no longer break out the number in future reports.

The Blue app graveyard, and what it represents, is something worth thinking about as the company enters its 21st year with a record high valuation above US$1 trillion (S$1.34 trillion).

Investors see Mr Zuckerberg as a weatherer of storms - bucking worries about the shift to mobile and, more recently, worries that Apple's privacy changes would blast a hole in its targeted ads business model, which in 2023 accounted for 97.8 per cent of its total revenue.