facebook to meta case study

Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta

The company wants to move past the ‘confusion and awkwardness’ of sharing a name with its main app.

By Alex Heath , a deputy editor and author of the Command Line newsletter. He’s covered the tech industry for over a decade at The Information and other outlets.

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For the first time in 17 years, Mark Zuckerberg has a new job title.

On Thursday, he officially became the CEO and chairman of Meta, the new parent company name for Facebook. The rebrand is about solidifying the social media giant as being about the metaverse , which Zuckerberg sees as the future of the internet. Zuckerberg is staying in control of everything. He told me in an interview that, unlike the founders of Google who stepped aside in 2015 when it became part of a holding company called Alphabet, he has no plans to give up the top job.

“I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first.”

Instead, the change is about recognizing a shift inside the company that’s already taken place. Zuckerberg has been pouring billions of dollars — at least $10 billion this year alone — into building the metaverse, an expansive, immersive vision of the internet taken from the pages of sci-fi novels like Snow Crash and Ready Player One . “I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” he told me this week over the phone. While details are slim, a unified account system is going to be introduced to span all of the company’s social apps, the Oculus Quest headset, Portal, and future devices. That means you won’t need a Facebook account to use the Quest.

The rebrand to Meta, announced by Zuckerberg today at the company’s annual Connect conference, has been a clandestine affair since he formally kicked off the project just over six months ago. The small handful of employees involved had to sign separate nondisclosure agreements, and Zuckerberg refused to tell me the name itself when we spoke the day before Connect. He said he had been thinking about rebranding the company ever since he bought Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014, but earlier this year he realized that it was time to make the change.

“I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps,” he said. “I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that.”

Recent leaks had “nothing to bear” on the name change

Zuckerberg knows that the timing of this rebrand is suspect. Over the past few weeks, the company has been hit with a nonstop barrage of criticism, thanks to leaked internal documents provided to the media by a former employee named Frances Haugen. Facebook is perhaps the most scrutinized company in the world right now, and its brand has soured in the eyes of young people. To the many critics, distancing the company brand and Zuckerberg from the name Facebook will be seen as an evasion tactic.

According to Zuckerberg, the current cycle of bad news “had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.”

The metaverse as an idea isn’t new, but it wasn’t thrust into the mainstream conversation until Zuckerberg started talking about it publicly earlier this year. The concept originates from Snow Crash , a dystopian novel from the 1990s in which people flee the crumbling real world to be fully immersed in a virtual one. While he acknowledges that the origins of the word are a “con,” Zuckerberg is trying to reclaim the metaverse as a utopian idea that will unlock an entirely new economy of virtual goods and services.

In the next decade, he thinks most people will be spending time in a fully immersive, 3D version of the internet that spans not just Meta’s hardware such as the Quest, but devices made by others. He’s pushing his teams to build technology that could one day let you show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar, or appear as a hologram of yourself in the real-world living room of your friend who lives across the planet.

What is the metaverse?

It depends who you ask, but it usually refers to an array of interconnected digital spaces, sometimes in VR, sometimes experienced through a social network, and sometimes including real-time reference points to the physical world. You can read more about it here .

He’s careful not to get into details, but he believes there will be a “pretty important role” for crypto technology like NFTs and smart contracts in the metaverse. “One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, ‘Do I really get to own this thing?’” he told me. “‘Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?’ And I’m pretty sensitive to that given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship, and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something.”

The software underpinning Zuckerberg’s take on the metaverse is called Horizon. It’s part Minecraft meets Roblox with an application for work collaboration as well. Next year, the company plans to introduce Project Cambria, a high-end, mixed reality headset previewed at Connect that mixes virtual graphics with the real world in full color. It will have face and eye tracking to allow for more realistic avatars.

Also in the works is a pair of AR glasses called Nazaré. While they are still several years out, to Zuckerberg they have the potential to be as widely used as mobile phones are today. The idea is that, unlike a VR headset that takes you out of the real world, Nazaré will look like a normal pair of glasses with displays capable of overlaying computing onto the world around you. “These products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today,” he said. “And I think just having a different identify for that is important.”

It’s unclear if this rebrand to Meta will achieve what Zuckerberg is aiming for, but there’s no question that it’s a bold move. The company is facing down new social media competitors, frustrated government regulators, and a new generation of potential users who view its core app as far from hip. The metaverse offers Zuckerberg a substantially new, maximalist direction to move toward. Now it needs to get to work.

Below is a transcript of my full interview with Zuckerberg. It has been edited for length and clarity:

Alex Heath: Can you explain why you’re doing this rebrand?

Mark Zuckerberg: At a high level, we did this segment reporting change on Monday as part of earnings. So we’re now looking at our business as two different segments. One for the social apps and one for future platforms basically. And the idea is that the metaverse work that we’re doing is not about any one of those segments. It’s not like Reality Labs is doing the work building the metaverse. It goes across all of this. The metaverse is going to be both future platforms and social experiences. 

So we wanted to have a new brand identity that, as you reported , is directionally aligned with the future vision that we’re working towards. There’s sort of a higher-level brand identity goal and then there’s a more technical and functional goal. The higher-level piece is that Facebook is the iconic social media brand. And increasingly we’re doing more than that. People think of us as a social media company, but the way we think about ourselves is that we’re a technology company that builds technology to help people connect with each other. We think that makes us different from the other companies because everyone else is trying to work on how people interact with technology, where as we we build technologies so that people can interact with each other. 

For us, it was never just about social media, and increasingly we’re moving beyond that. It felt like having the brand of the company be tied to the idea of social media and one of the specific products that we’re building there — because we now have Instagram and WhatsApp growing to be really important as well — felt increasingly like it didn’t encompass everything that we were doing. So we wanted to shift that to have something that is more evocative of the vision that we’re moving towards. 

“It’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products.”

On a more functional and technical basis, I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps. When people wanted to go sign into their Quest, we wanted them to sign in with their Facebook account because we wanted to have a single identity or account system for the company. Google has that, Apple has that. Microsoft has it. But for us, the issue is that if you’re signing into Quest or WhatsApp or Instagram with a Facebook account, I think that there was a confusion about, “Am I signing into this with my Facebook corporate account or is this going to be tied to my social media account?” People had concerns on Quest. “If I don’t want to use Facebook or if something happens and my account gets deactivated, is my device now going to get bricked?” That’s a concern that I think people shouldn’t have to have. People had concerns that, “If I sign into Instagram with this or if I sign into WhatsApp with it, does that mean that my data is somehow gonna get shared over here in a way that I didn’t want?” 

I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that. So from a functional perspective, I thought it was very important to have that. And as I looked out several years towards launching something like Nazaré, these products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today. I think just having a different identify for that is important. 

When I thought about when was the best time to try to make that shift, it’s kind of like as soon as possible once you realize that you want to do that. So that’s what led us down this path. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I formally kicked off the project earlier this year. It was a little over more than six months ago. But this is a debate that we’ve been having for a long time inside the company, about whether we should do this. It’s something that I’ve been working with Alex Schultz on very closely since he became the CMO.

Is there a restructuring component of this functionally with how the organizations report to people as well? Or is it more just the brand?

There’s the financial reporting and segment reporting. There is the brand. There will be the account system. We’re not making org changes today as part of that. That might be something that I’ll consider in the future, but I don’t think that’s something that’s near term on the horizon.

You said you started this formally about six months ago. Is it at all a reaction to the brand baggage and the brand tax you guys sometimes refer to internally that Facebook has, and just wanting to distance from that? Or is it really more just looking ahead? I have to imagine it’s a mix of both.

We started well before the current cycle [of bad news]. I think the current cycle clearly had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in. 

“To me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something.”

I think sometimes you just have to keep pushing forward. There’s a lot of different aspects and attributes of these brands. There’s obviously all these good and bad attributes that people ascribe to social media overall, and Facebook in particular. And these are conversations that we sort of had inside the company I think going back to, like 2014, ever since Instagram and WhatsApp joined and we became a family of apps. There was a little bit of an inherent awkwardness to having the company named after one of them. I never really considered it when I thought the primary thing that we were doing was social media, because Facebook was and still is the iconic social media brand. So it always felt a little odd to me to have a brand that was supposed to stand for social media and take Facebook out of that slot and put something else in. That felt a little odd. I wasn’t sure what job that would be doing. 

But now I think the next chapter of what we’re doing is coming more into focus. And I know that a lot of people are gonna have questions like the one that you asked. To what extent are we running towards something versus running away from it? And I guess all I can say is that, to me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something. And that this is a vision for the future that we’re really excited about and that we’re committed to and we’re really going for. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this if that wasn’t in my heart how I felt about what we were doing. 

I know that people will kind of ascribe a lot of different reasons, and obviously there’s different pros and cons of doing different things. But that was a basic litmus test for me. I wasn’t gonna let us do this if I didn’t feel really strongly about the thing that we were anchoring our brand on and how we were going to move forward.

Do you think it helps with internal morale and recruiting as well, if you’re looking ahead and you’re trying to reposition how the company is thought of in the valley and where you’re hiring from?

I think that’s an interesting question. My guess is it will help with some people, but it might also be different for some people. So I’m not sure. We’ve had this conversation for several months now since I’ve signaled that I wanted us to become a metaverse company and be seen in this way. And I’d say, overall, the sentiment is definitely positive internally about it. I think more people are very excited about it.

“We continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps.”

But I think it’s also really important to our team, and frankly it’s important to me, too, that we continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps. A lot of people come to Facebook today because that’s what they want to go do. And I think it’s really important to people that we are paying attention to that going forward. Billions of people use our products and we need to make sure we keep doing that well. But I do think it should be exciting to people. I think, in general, the best people want to work as part of big missions. I certainly think that the metaverse as the next chapter of the internet is going to be really exciting to a lot of the right people. I think we’re clearly positioned as a company that has the most ambitious vision and the deepest commitment and investment in this area.

Is part of this at all about setting up a way for you to change your role at the company in the coming years? Do you still see yourself as CEO and chairman in, say, five years?

I think probably. I don’t have a specific date how long I want to be doing this for. I guess what I could say is I’m very excited about the next chapter of what we’re doing. So I really want to go do that. So yeah, I don’t have anything more to add on that. I wouldn’t look at this as part of a plan to move in that direction.

Because you know you’re gonna get the Alphabet comparisons.

Yeah, I think it’s a fair question. I guess what I can say is that really isn’t what we’re doing here. I think this is more about just signaling our commitment to this vision and focusing on it, setting up a new brand architecture for the company so that way all people who use our products can have a relationship with the company that is separate from their relationship with the apps. I’m very excited about what we’re building. And I’m pretty young. I have a lot of energy. But certainly at some point I’m not [going to be] running the company. That’s not really what this is about, though.

It sounds like you’re implying that there’s going to be a new unified account system across everything?

You’ll have a Facebook account and you’ll have an Instagram account. You’ll also have an account with the company that’s the top level. So that way if you don’t want to use Facebook, you don’t have to. One interesting analogy here is I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first. I feel like this is in a way like when Microsoft went from being Windows first to cloud first.

There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.

So I think it’s about being able to pick and choose which of the services you want to use and know that, no matter what happens to your Facebook account or your Instagram account, you’re still going to have all the content that you bought in VR or all your virtual goods. You can set up an avatar and it can be tied to one of those accounts or could just be tied to your overall identity across the different family of apps. And you can use it in all these places if you want. I bet that’s going to be pretty powerful.

Is the whole metaverse push also tied at all to the work on young adults and teens ? Kids love Roblox. They love Fortnite . Is that a part of it, too?

It’s not the primary part of it. I do think it’s important to clarify that when I’m talking about what our north star demographic here is, we’re talking about young adults 18 to 29, not primarily teens and certainly not primarily kids. But like college and post college, that’s sort of historically been the strong base for us. And generally it continues to be a strong base. But I think it’s really important that as so many more people use all our products, that we don’t lose sight of that.

“I don’t think [metaverse is] really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.”

The median age of the people who use our products gets older. As we try to make our services better for everyone, I just want to make sure that the quality doesn’t drift for young adults. What I’ve basically told every team is whenever you’re building anything now, whether you’re working on feed ranking or you’re building groups or you’re designing Reels or video or Marketplace, keep in mind especially what’s going to be important to young adults. Let’s say you’re building Marketplace. What young adults need to buy and sell is probably different from what people who are later in their life need to buy and sell. So there are just all these different ways that I think the products will shift to going in that direction. 

And that certainly goes for everything that we’re going to be doing around the metaverse, too. That’ll be the north star demographic, the hero demographic, that we keep in mind. But a lot of what we’re talking about is probably nearer term than metaverse will be. I think the work we’re doing on the metaverse will be very exciting over the next few years, but I think so much fundamental stuff has to get done that I don’t think it’s really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.

We face a lot of competition from TikTok and iMessage especially now, as well as a bunch of others that have been around forever — YouTube, Snapchat. But TikTok and iMessage are growing incredibly quickly. So I think in terms of our focus on the apps, and Facebook and Instagram in particular, that I think is going to be a bigger thing over the next one to three years. Whereas the metaverse work I think will be a little further out in terms of actually reaching a ton of people.

The term metaverse. I’m thinking about it originating from Snow Crash and that dystopia that it originates from and the context of that term, does that concern you at all? It’s kind of funny that it originates from people trying to flee the real world into a virtual one because the real one is crumbling. Is that something you thought about at all when you were thinking about leaning into the word?

Yeah, I think that’s certainly a con of it. But I think it means more than that. Obviously, the book has this whole environment around it that’s sort of negative. But I don’t think it has to be that way. I also think that as these technologies develop, they take on different connotations and metaphors. I would be very surprised if five years from now the main association that almost anyone had with the metaverse was about the initial mention of it in Snow Crash . What it’s going to mean to people is going to be all the use cases that they have in there and what they’re able to do with it.

I’d actually be interested to look at what the earliest mentions of the internet were. People called it the information superhighway and stuff. None of that was was super negative, but it was pretty odd when compared to how we think about it today. I think that these things are always more dynamic. I didn’t want to be deterred from using what seemed like the clearest and most logical term that matched what we were building because of some negative connotations that some people have. It’ll take on more meaning than that.

A part of Connect that interested me was you talking about crypto and new forms of governance in the metaverse. Are you working on supporting NFTs ? It seemed to me like you were thinking about DAOs. I’d be curious to know what you think of that and smart contracts in general?

I don’t have anything to announce on that right now. But here’s what I’d say. The projects that we’ve done around Novi, I do think we’ve been the most forward leaning of the big tech companies around this space. So clearly we’re interested in it and generally supportive of the space and think that there’s an important role for it to play in the future.

One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, “Do I really get to own this thing? Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?” And I’m pretty sensitive to that, given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something. All that becomes a lot more sensitive when there’s money and ownership, people pay for something. They just really want to know that their thing isn’t going to be taken away.

“I do think that there’s an important place for more decentralization”

I do think that there’s a pretty important role, whether it’s the current way that people are thinking about NFTs or just ways to do decentralized entitlements across the metaverse. I don’t think that there’s going to be only one system. But I do think that there’s an important place for more decentralization across that. As more of our projects become more mature, then we’ll have more to talk about in that space.

I’m wondering if you think that Facebook has faced so much scrutiny because of how it controls the flow of speech and because there’s just natural tension there, and people don’t like that sometimes. Or because of how top-down it is, where people have little say in how it runs or an ability to make money on the platform? I think a lot of the media scrutiny operates with the assumption that you’re not stopping enough of the bad. Or that, on the more extreme end, any bad means the platform is net negative.

I do think, in general, the last five years have been a big learning period for me and the company. There were a lot of issues that we’ve just had to build much more sophisticated programs around, whether that’s around building AI systems to identify proactively all these different kinds of harmful content and act on them, building a much stronger privacy program, a lot more with encryption, all of these different things. 

A lot of these are things that we cared about much earlier in the company and had some programs around, but we really kicked a lot of them into high gear after 2016. I think some of that was spurred by some of the scrutiny and then just us being introspective and saying, “Hey, I do think we should build stronger programs here.” Now, in general, I’m very proud of what we built there. I think it’s difficult problems and you’re balancing complex social equities between things like free expression and trying to address harmful content. It’s impossible to ever do both perfectly. And I think that the ideal answer probably isn’t to just lean in one direction fully or the other. It’s to try to balance it. So then you end up not making anyone particularly happy. But I am genuinely proud of the work that we’re doing there. It’s an industry-leading effort. I think anyone who’s serious acknowledges that. The investments and results far exceed the sophistication of anyone else. 

But still, when you’re talking about building a new ecosystem, I just think it would undoubtedly be better to build these things in from the beginning this time. We’re pretty serious about that. So the question of what are the principles. Privacy is a really important one. And so is it safety, especially if you’re in such an immersive environment. You want to be able to say, “Hey, this person is bothering me. I need to get out of here quickly, or I want them to disappear to me.” So there are all these different dynamics that we basically want to embed in the foundation of it. Interoperability is another. It’s been disappointing, the level of interoperability today on the mobile internet. So hopefully we can do better in the next one.

I don’t know. One thing that I’ve talked about over the years is building these platforms around people instead of apps. I do think there’s something to this where, if the atomic unit of this system is it’s like an embodied internet and you’re in it and the atomic unit is you have your avatar and your digital goods. And the different apps aren’t completely different things. They’re just different spaces that you can teleport to.

I think that’s an architecture that should be fundamentally more amenable to interoperability, as long as you build the right standards in from the beginning, than one where the atomic unit like our mobile platforms today is apps. And the assumption is that every app is a completely different environment and you start from nothing in each one. So I do think that there’s something about how you design these things and make it more people-centric that either leans more or less towards that. So we’ll see. But I think it’s going to be good to try to build some of these things in from the front.

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More from this stream Facebook Connect: all the news about ‘Meta’ and Mark Zuckerberg’s VR dream

Amid the fluff, meta showed an impressive demo of its codec avatars, with facebook’s change to meta, what’s the new big tech acronym, facebook’s oculus quest will soon be called the meta quest, facebook’s famous thumbs-up hq sign has been replaced with meta.

Facebook and the creation of the metaverse: radical business model innovation or incremental transformation?

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research

ISSN : 1355-2554

Article publication date: 23 February 2022

Issue publication date: 19 December 2022

In a move characterized by ambiguity, Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021, announcing a new era of social interaction, enabled by the metaverse technology that appears poised to become the future center of gravity for online social interactions. At first glance, the communicated change signals a radically new business model (BM) based on an unprecedented configuration of the three following components: value creation, value proposition and value capture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Facebook’s announced changes in its BM to clarify whether the change is as radical as communicated or rather represents an incremental transformation of the current BM.

Design/methodology/approach

This investigation adopted an in-depth case study research method. The process included using a structured approach to collect 153 data points, including academic studies and publicly available information, followed by qualitative content analysis.

The results of our analysis of Facebook’s entrepreneurial journey indicate that the communicated strategic refocusing does not correspond to a radical BM innovation pattern. Even though Facebook’s BM might evolve into the innovation phase, as the current changes appear very futuristic, the authors estimate that the core elements of the BM will change incrementally. The investigation indicates that the underlying logic of the straightforward communicative efforts primarily serves two purposes: to improve the external perception of the company and to disseminate an internal change signal within the organization.

Originality/value

This paper is the first study that takes an entrepreneurship and BM perspective in analyzing Facebook’s approach in rebranding to Meta and refocusing its strategy on building the metaverse. The academic and practical relevance, as well as the potential future impact on business and society, makes the investigation of this case an intriguing prospect. Additionally, the study illuminates the difference between the communicated vision and the real impact on the business, suggesting critical questions about future large-scale rebranding efforts and their effects.

• Business model innovation

Kraus, S. , Kanbach, D.K. , Krysta, P.M. , Steinhoff, M.M. and Tomini, N. (2022), "Facebook and the creation of the metaverse: radical business model innovation or incremental transformation?", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research , Vol. 28 No. 9, pp. 52-77. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-12-2021-0984

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Sascha Kraus, Dominik K. Kanbach, Peter M. Krysta, Maurice M. Steinhoff and Nino Tomini

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

A new artificial name that arouses interest, a modern, innovation-signaling logo, and a CEO announcing that the entire business will radically change: such a combination of events may be unusual but is not unprecedented in the world of business. This was the case in 2003, representing a last-ditch effort on the part of the tobacco giant Philipp Morris after years of negative publicity highlighting unhealthy practices and fraudulent claims in a rebranding to “Altria” applied without significantly altering its business practices ( Cordasco, 2003 ). Almost two decades later, this innovative entrepreneurial act appears more modern than ever in light of recent events. On October 28, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the “social network of the world” ( Read, 2013 , p. 193), Facebook announced a name change to “Meta” while elaborating on a new vision that entailed building up the “metaverse,” a three-dimensional space representation based on virtual and augmented reality ( Choi and Kim, 2017 ). At first glance, the new name and a far-reaching vision appear to be an innovation, suggesting a significant impact on the company’s overall business model (BM).

BMs have developed as a critical tool for commercializing innovations by providing a framework that a company can use to create and capture value from technological developments or innovative ideas ( Chesbrough, 2010 ; Osterwalder et al. , 2005 ; Teece, 2010 ). Following their recognition as critical drivers of innovation, BMs in themselves have become a differentiation factor in the competitive landscape. Nevertheless, even a well-established and currently profitable BM cannot be seen as a permanent fixture, considering the dynamic, constantly changing environment that companies face ( Chesbrough, 2010 ). In practical terms, researchers are increasingly identifying a company’s ability to change its BM before being forced to do so by external pressure, especially in volatile contexts, to be a critical source of competitive advantage ( Hamel and Valikangas, 2004 ). The understanding of the need for a constantly changing BM has increased the scholars’ focus on business model innovation (BMI) and has led to a burgeoning in the number of academic publications devoted to the subject ( Foss and Saebi, 2017 ). Furthermore, some authors have referred to BMI as a viable way for organizations to adjust to changing sources of value generation in times of high environmental instability ( Pohle and Chapman, 2006 ; Schneider and Spieth, 2013 ).

One example of a prominent corporation facing significant external pressure while at the same time experiencing high environmental instability is the social network giant Facebook. Over the last decade, social media use has skyrocketed: Facebook’s platforms alone featured 2.9 billion monthly active members as of the third quarter of 2021, making this entity the largest social network in the world ( Facebook, 2021a ). Moreover, the company is not just the leading social network in the world, but after large-scale acquisitions followed by steep growth, it also currently offers the largest photo-sharing platform through Instagram, the most popular instant messaging service through WhatsApp ( Statista, 2021 ), and the leading manufacturer of virtual reality glasses through Oculus ( Mainelli et al. , 2020 ).

Despite this evident success, Facebook has recently faced several waves of criticism, undermining users’ trust and generating significant negative publicity. Among the company’s substantial problems was the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting incident, which became public in 2018, involving 87 million records that were used for advanced and decisive targeting purposes in the presidential campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ( Confessore, 2018 ; ur Rehman, 2019 ). The company also drew antitrust investigations ( Srinivasan, 2019 ), aroused privacy and security concerns ( Noman et al. , 2019 ), and became infamous for a toxic working culture and managerial shortcomings ( Paul, 2021a ).

Thus, the company’s unforeseen announcement presented a new company focus, aiming “to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses” ( Meta, 2021a ). According to the company, now named Meta, the metaverse will resemble a mix of today’s online social experiences in a three-dimensional space or projected into the real world ( Meta, 2021a ). As a technology, this new vehicle may significantly influence connections between the users and the platform by addressing the visual, auditory, somatosensory and gustatory senses while allowing for movement- and touch-based interactions ( Studen and Tiberius, 2020 ). Accordingly, the company has defined its new vision as going beyond a further development of the products or services, to the point of “ushering in a new chapter” ( Meta, 2021a ) for Meta.

From one perspective, Facebook’s move to make use of technology as a driver for innovation might look promising; however, the “metaverse,” including its underlying concept, does not fit the definition of an innovation in so many words. The term first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel Snow Crash in 1992; moreover, academics have been writing about ideas such as “extended reality” and “virtual worlds” for decades ( Dionisio et al. , 2013 ; Kelly, 2021 ; Lee et al. , 2021 ; Payne, 2021 ). The predecessor of the metaverse, Second Life , which was established in 2003, reached 57 million registered accounts in its own virtual world by its 15th anniversary ( Voyager, 2018 ). On Second Life, users interact in various ways, such as sending instant messages, co-visiting destinations, attending multi-player games, or creating, selling and buying virtual artifacts. Despite its large userbase, the platform lacked to grow ( Schultz, 2018 ; Voyager, 2018 ), and the factors that have led to diminished user growth in the case of Second Life remain unclear. One barrier might be the limited transferability of a user’s existing network onto the platform, causing increased costs for users who wish to make the transition. Building on the hypotheses of virtual 3D interaction, validated by Second Life, this, in turn, could be a promising opportunity and advantage for Meta to transfer its existing userbase into metaverse, ultimately paving the way to new and transaction-based revenue streams.

In contrast, tech giants’ ability to innovate and diversify their portfolio of BMs has been evident in their past actions. For example, in 2015, Google announced the re-formation of its parent holding company under the new name “Alphabet Inc.” ( Page, 2015 ). With this name change, the company indicated its diversification from a search engine toward a multi-business tech giant, offering navigation services, entertainment, and office and communication solutions, along with its engagement in mobility services and drone delivery, all of which take the form of 13 individual subsidiaries ( Hartmans and Meisenzahl, 2019 ). While rebranding is a commonality between these two cases, Facebook is not as diverse in its fields of activities in that it focuses on one domain: connecting people across the globe. Thus, it might be questionable whether the recent move, involving risk and uncertainty, is a concise step toward innovation in terms of the existing BM.

The present article extends the current research about BMI in several dimensions. Because of the high empirical relevance and topicality, the Meta case is an excellent object for tapping further into currently underrepresented research regarding the trajectory of a BM and related innovation activities, including rebranding. The current literature tends to focus on defining BMI ( Breier et al. , 2021 ; Filser et al. , 2021 ; Schneider and Spieth, 2013 ), identifying impacts on the BM ( Baden-Fuller and Haefliger, 2013 ; Clauss et al. , 2020 ), or describing the necessity and benefits of BMI ( Aagaard and Nielsen, 2021 ). Our study aims to contribute to the specific cross-section of BMI ( Breier et al. , 2021 ; Christensen et al. , 2016 ; Clauss, 2017 ), the use of metaverse technology ( Dionisio et al. , 2013 ; Goossens et al. , 2021 ; Javornik et al. , 2021 ; Jaynes et al. , 2003 ; Lee et al. , 2021 ; Massa et al. , 2017 ) and corporate branding (e.g. Balmer, 1995 ; Bergstrom et al. , 2002 ; Hatch and Schultz, 2003 ; Fisher-Buttinger and Vallaster, 2008 ). The overall objective of this paper is to enrich the understanding of the trajectories of BMs and their innovation and, specifically, the types of change that a BM may undergo. To achieve this goal, we will analyze the ambiguity of the current phenomenon via an in-depth case study to delineate whether the rebranding of Facebook to Meta can be characterized as a radical BM innovation or, alternatively, as an incremental transformation.

Theoretical framework

The innovation of business models.

Scholars have discussed the topic of business development and innovation since the 1970s ( Clauss et al. , 2020 ; Foss and Saebi, 2017 ; Greiner, 1972 ; Nielsen et al. , 2019 ). BMI has been defined as a firm’s attempt to develop, implement and sustain ways to create, deliver and capture value ( Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart, 2010 ; Kraus et al. , 2020 ; Schneider, 2019 ) . Thus, firms change their way of doing business by changing the architecture or configuration of the set of activities and relationships of components in a BM with an eye to serving (new) customers ( Clauss et al. , 2020 ; Foss and Saebi, 2017 ; Muhic and Bengtsson, 2021 ). While some researchers have argued for commonalities between the product/process and BMI ( Bucherer et al. , 2012 ) or the use of scenario techniques ( Gnatzy and Moser, 2012 ), others have regarded BMI as an individual type of innovation aimed to secure the future existence of a firm ( Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, 2013 ; Filser et al. , 2021 ; Massa and Tucci, 2014 ).

The BMI literature focuses on innovation and change while primarily examining what changes and to what extent ( how much ) in terms of value creation innovation, new proposition innovation and value capture innovation ( Clauss, 2017 ). However, the success of BMI activities might not only depend upon what and how much is changed in the BM but may also reflect the aspect of when change happens ( Johnson and Christensen, 2000 ; McGahan, 2004 ; Cliffe, 2011 ). In this case, the chronological order of innovation activities guides BMI. Based on this view, a variety of perspectives on change in BMs can be distinguished ( Filser et al. , 2021 ; Schneider and Spieth, 2013 ). Among them, some contributions follow a process perspective ( Demil and Lecocq, 2010 ; Wirtz and Daiser, 2018 ), characterized by an iterative trial-and-error process ( McGrath, 2010 ; Sosna et al. , 2010 ) as well as a constant learning process ( Chanal and Caron-Fasan, 2010 ; McGrath, 2010 ) . While various companies’ approaches to conducting BMI might differ, it can be concluded that a firm is required to engage in simultaneous BMI activities and thus explore and exploit new opportunities ( Holmqvist, 2009 ; March, 1991 ; Markides, 2013 ).

From a holistic perspective on BM ( what and how much ) and BMI ( when and how ), painting a blurry picture of the trajectory of a BM. Represented by units sold, revenues made and profits realized, the trajectory describes the development of the business over time, which can be categorized in phases.

Among researchers’ views of the development of a business and the respective phases, two perspectives have dominated to guide the examination of this topic: (1) the product or firm and (2) the industry. According to the first perspective, the product ( Vernon, 1966 ) or the firm itself ( Chandler, 1969 ; Greiner, 1972 ; Levitt, 1965 ) is the subject of observation. The underlying logic is that a business is created (phase 1), then grows with increasing production volumes and revenues (phase 2), reaches maturity when operations become efficient (phase 3), and ultimately declines (phase 4), with decreasing product volumes and revenues at the end of life. Other scholars have argued for the adjustment of a business in relation to the development of the industry it operates in McGahan (2004) , Peltoniemi (2011) , Tavassoli (2015) . This industry perspective involves observing the number of (new) businesses, product volumes and revenues. In the first phase, where an industry might be characterized as being in its cradle, new companies enter the industry as they create and supply increasing demands. In the second phase, as the industry grows, more companies join. Eventually, growth rates begin to decline, revenues plateau and mergers happen as the industry attains maturity in its third phase. As an industry approaches the end of life, the number of companies decreases steadily, causing the industry to diminish.

Both perspectives, product-based and industry-based, serve to specify the development phases of a BM. The product life cycle can be adopted for the BM, including offerings, markets, and customer channels, customer relationships and revenue models. The industry’s contextual factors, such as partnerships, technologies and cost structures, can influence the BM as well. However, independent of which parts of a BM change over time and taking all insights together into consideration, we argue for strong commonalities between the beforementioned life-cycle concepts and the development of a BM over time. Consequently, we propose the following four phases for the evolution of a BM and its performance expressed in profitability: (1) creation and experimentation, where the business is created and experiments on the model configuration occur; (2) growth and expansion, where the business grows in revenue and the dominant model is established; (3) profitability and efficiency, where the business runs profitably and the model achieves the highest efficiency; and (4) innovation or discontinuation, where the model is innovated or it ultimately discontinues operation (see Figure 1 ).

The components of business models

BMs provide an abstract construct that conceptualizes how a company conducts business, reducing complexity and presenting the idea in a simplified way. According to Drucker (1994) , every company has “a theory of the business” that explains why it gets paid. The literature strand on BMs has exploded, becoming an individual field of research in the last two decades ( Foss and Saebi, 2017 ) and leading to the evolution of many definitions ( Kraus et al. , 2020 ; Nielsen et al. , 2019 ). Following Osterwalder et al. (2005) , “[…] a business model is a conceptual tool containing a set of objects, concepts and their relationships with the objective to express the business logic of a specific firm. Therefore, we must consider which concepts and relationships allow a simplified description and representation of what value is provided to customers, how this is done and with which financial consequences” (p. 3). While researchers did not have yet to reach an agreement for mandatory components in a BM, they find unity concerning the question the models need to answer: How does the business generate value for the customer and profit for the firm? In simple terms, the concept explains what business does for whom and why and clarifies how profits are made ( Boudreau, 2017 ; Chesbrough, 2007 ; Teece, 2010 ). One dominant BM concept integrates three dimensions to answer this question, defining the dominant logic for BMs as governing how value is (1) created, (2) delivered and (3) captured ( Gassmann et al. , 2015 ; Kaplan, 2012 ; Spieth and Schneider, 2016 ). Considering BMI as a central activity for an entrepreneur seeking to secure the profitability of the firm, innovation in the BM is made along the three dimensions as (1) value creation innovation, (2) new proposition innovation (3) and value capture innovation ( Clauss, 2017 ).

Clauss (2017) and Spieth and Schneider (2016) suggested that innovation activity in each dimension must be observed on a more fine-grained level of the BM. Therefore, every dimension can be disassembled and structured into BM components as follows: value creation innovation (new capabilities, technologies, partnerships and processes), new proposition innovation (new offerings, customers and markets, channels and customer relationships) and value capture innovation (new revenue models and value cost structures). Figure 2 illustrates the scheme we established in adapting the authors’ concepts for our analysis.

Drivers of business model innovation

The lifespan of a BM is often limited. In particular, in a fast-paced environment such as the digital world, a previously successful BM may significantly decrease its ability to serve the customer base and lose profitability ( Chesbrough, 2007 , 2010 ). This situation compels companies to constantly search for new, optimal configurations of BM components even before they encounter pressures outside the organization that force them to do so ( Hjalager, 2010 ). Adaptations of configurations have a positive impact on the performance of the firm and allow it to retain a competitive advantage ( Teece, 2010 ). Especially in the case of environments that are characterized by major changes, research findings have indicated that the impact of BM innovations is significant ( Breier et al. , 2021 ).

When BMI is viewed as an alteration of BM configurations, changes do not need to take place in all components simultaneously to have an impact on the success of the firm. For example, when the needed technology already exists and has a potential for success, firms can successfully opt for changing the BM configurations in the value capturing space, changing the revenue-generation mechanisms ( Clauss et al. , 2020 ). However, some alterations are small calibrations leveraging other parts of the entire system and are therefore considered incremental ( Muhic and Bengtsson, 2021 ) . On the other end of the spectrum is a radical change in the configuration of components that consequently adjusts the entire incumbent BM significantly ( Johnson and Christensen, 2000 ). In line with Clauss et al. (2020) , we argue that modifications in BMs can differ in their extent and range from incremental changes to completely new and radical solutions.

The impelling reasons for these adaptations can be forces that are pushing or pulling entrepreneurial decisions in a certain direction, thus shaping the extent of any change as well as the new design of the BM ( Lüdeke-Freund, 2010 ). Examples of pulling factors that influence BM include changes in institutional environments, significant industry and market shifts, and technological developments ( Wang and Kimble, 2016 ). In addition, changes in a firm’s internal resources and capability configurations, such as the organizational structure of a company, its culture, organizational inertia and leadership, may drive competitive advantage and consequently trigger the need for change in a firm’s BM ( Bashir and Verma, 2019 ).

Methodology

In this scholarly endeavor, we sought to best accommodate answering the research question regarding Facebook’s decision to become Meta and its implications for the type of change to the company’s BM by adopting a qualitative approach that offers great potential in the creation of understanding in complex environments ( Massa et al. , 2017 ). Specifically, we chose the case study method for our investigation ( Eisenhardt, 1989 ; Gustafsson, 2017 ; Yin, 2011 ).

To maximize the reproducibility and transparency of our findings, we employed a structured, systematic sampling strategy that used three sequential steps to discover data about Facebook/Meta. The first step involved developing a review protocol and identifying relevant types of publications. Second, doing the review required identifying and choosing data from the indicated sources, as well as extracting, synthesizing and discussing the data. Last came the reporting and distribution step, which concentrated on the conduction of the analysis and the observation of results, as well as evaluating the practical consequences of our findings.

Because we wished to guarantee that we would be able to explore the full scope of the data, we implemented the following collection method. First, we did a keyword search in the EBSCO Business Source Ultimate database using phrases such as “Facebook,” “Meta,” “Strategy,” “Innovation,” “Transformation,” “Business Model” and “Metaverse.” The search keywords were deliberately broad in order to encompass all pertinent information and lead to interesting results. For example, the search for the keyword “Metaverse” led to 20 publications in academic journals, including Dionisio et al. (2013) , Gadalla et al. (2013) and Falchuk et al. (2018) . Next, we used the same or comparable search terms to search additional databases (ScienceDirect, JSTOR and Google Scholar). The third step involved carefully scanning all annual and quarterly reports, along with press releases and the corporate website published by Facebook/Meta. Fourth, we conducted a keyword search in two leading Internet search engines (Google and Bing) to integrate information from various stakeholders, such as reports and articles from reputable newspapers and weblogs. The keywords used for this search were similar to those used in our search in the EBSCO Business Source Ultimate database, with the further addition of specific search terms such as “start-up phase” or “scandals.” Data until December 6, 2021 were included in the analysis.

The research protocol described above produced 153 relevant data points. We structured the data into three clusters according to their source and issuing institution: (1) data from journal publications (48 data points), (2) data from (online) sources issued by other institutions (such as newspaper articles) (83 data points) and (3) data from online sources issued by Facebook/Meta (22 data points). Figure 3 provides further details on these data points.

Data analysis

In performing our data analysis, we followed Mayring's (2000) guidelines for qualitative content analysis. The authors of this study conducted separate analyses of the available textual material, guided by the principles proposed by Fairclough et al. (2007) and Hardy (2001) , who suggested analyzing three aspects. The first involved the text’s subjects and objects (i.e. who are the text’s protagonists and how do they connect). Next, the analysis considered the language used, including types of text and speech actions (e.g. does the text defend, criticize, accuse, sympathize, correct, explain or threaten) as well as the tone of the text (e.g. aggressive and peaceful). Finally, we analyzed the key ideas emerging from the text to understand the context in which the text is embedded. After independently conducting our analysis of the text material, we compared and discussed our findings to eliminate subjectivity and arbitrariness.

Our findings are threefold, comprising the evaluation of (1) the life-cycle phase of Facebook’s BM, (2) the type of change to Facebook’s BM and (3) the drivers of change that can be observed. In our results, we describe five observations and link them to the theoretical framework.

Descriptive analysis of Facebook’s entrepreneurial journey

Taking the aforementioned phases and development in the BM life cycle into consideration, the following discussion outlines the descriptive analysis of Facebook’s entrepreneurial journey, accompanied by an overview of Facebook’s evolution (see Figure 4 ).

Creation and experimentation phase (2004–2005)

Facebook is a US-based social media technology company that was founded in 2004 by Harvard student Marc Zuckerberg and his fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under the initial name “thefacebook,” the company provided a web-based multi-sided platform that exclusively connected Harvard students. On this platform, the students were able to create a personal profile and share content across the personal network. In the first month, more than half of the students at Harvard University registered on Facebook ( Philipps, 2007 ). After the successful launch of the platform at Harvard University, Facebook expanded to all Ivy League universities, going on to include more than 800 universities globally by 2005 ( The Telegraph, 2012 ). By the end of 2004, Facebook had more than 1 million registered users; at this time, the first corporates approached Facebook about advertising on the platform ( Pereira, 2021 ). In 2004, Facebook received its first investment of $500,000 from Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal ( The Age, 2008 ), and an additional investment of $12.7 million in 2005 from Accel Partner ( McBride, 2012 ). By the end of 2005, Facebook hosted more than 6 million registered users on the platform ( Pereira, 2021 ).

Growth and expansion phase (2005–2012)

After receiving those first investments and in light of its growing user base, Facebook decided to grant access to everyone on the platform to connect with friends ( Facebook, 2006 ). Next, Facebook launched the Facebook Developer Platform in 2007 to encourage developers to build applications that were integrated into Facebook (2007) . By 2008, more than 400,000 developers from 160 countries had registered to develop applications ( Facebook, 2008 ). In 2010, more than 500 million users had registered on Facebook ( TechCrunch, 2010 ); half of the users accessed Facebook daily and spent on average 34 min on the platform ( Arthur and Kiss, 2010 ). Also in that year, the valuation of Facebook rose to more than $33 billion ( Wearden, 2010 ). By that time, Facebook had documented more than 870 million visitors and was estimated to reach 46.9% of all Internet users ( Protalinski, 2011 ). In this time frame, Facebook became the second most accessed website after Google ( BBC, 2012 ). In 2012, Facebook launched an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq Stock Market, selling shares that raised the valuation of Facebook to $104 billion ( The Guardian, 2012a ). Also by that time, Facebook had reached one billion users ( Smith et al. , 2012 ).

Efficiency and profitability phase (2012–2020)

The second decade of the twenty-first century was shaped by the emergence of developments in global technology and innovation. The initial Facebook platform was accessible via personal computers, but changing user demands mandated a solution that would allow user access via mobile Internet ( Constine, 2012 ). While Facebook was the forerunner in social media and social networks, an increasing number of competitors entered the market and offered mobile services and solutions. One result of the successful IPO on the Nasdaq Stock Market was the great pressure investors put on Facebook to increase its financial performance ( Glick and Ruetschlin, 2019 ). Hence, the increasing pressure of the investors and the changing user demands required a gradual shift from a web-based platform into a mobile application ( Tsukayama, 2012 ). Therefore, aiming to improve the user experience and broaden its product portfolio by adding and improving mobile services and applications, Facebook spent more than $23 billion to acquire more than 90 companies, most of which were acquired between 2012 and 2020. The following discussion will shed light on the three most important acquisitions with the highest capital expenditures: Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus.

In 2012, Facebook bought the mobile media-sharing company Instagram for $1 billion in stock and cash. The company, founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2009, was not profitable at the time of the acquisition, but the steadily growing user base provided an enormous potential for advertising as a central revenue stream ( Geron, 2012 ). In addition, a growing user base for Instagram was highly anticipated due to the user and media-sharing experience. Facebook aimed to derive some essential learning from this acquisition in order to improve the user experience and Facebook’s features sustainably ( The Guardian, 2012a , b ). Due to Instagram’s rapid growth rate, Facebook identified a great opportunity for massive scaling of a digital and mobile platform BM ( Wagner, 2017 ).

Facebook bought the American mobile-messaging company WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion, representing the company’s largest acquisition at the time. Founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009, at the time of the acquisition, WhatsApp already had 500 million active customers who used the mobile-messaging application frequently ( Chowdhry, 2014 ). Potentially, WhatsApp was acquired due to the rapidly growing user base and the increasing customer demand for mobile messaging services ( Olson, 2014 ). In addition, this acquisition was a strategic investment to create strong market entry barriers for competitors ( Blodget, 2014 ). By 2020, more than 2 billion people were using WhatsApp frequently ( Facebook, 2020 ). Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp demonstrated the company’s strong capability to integrate new companies and to scale them rapidly to a new level.

In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus, an American company that develops virtual reality devices and digital services, for $2 billion in stock and cash. At that time, Oculus had a steadily growing customer base and was highly regarded in the gaming industry ( Dredge, 2014 ). The acquisition of Oculus was a strategic investment to expand the emerging virtual reality technology from gaming into new business verticals ( Facebook, 2014 ). This investment supported Facebook in developing the virtual reality gaming platform Facebook Horizon Worlds and the virtual remote working application Facebook Horizon Workrooms, virtual environments that can be accessed via the Oculus Quest devices ( Meta, 2021a ).

By 2020, Facebook had more than 2.8 billion users and generated a revenue of $86 billion ( Facebook, 2021b ).

Innovation or discontinuation phase (2021–present)

In October 2021, Facebook announced the change of the company’s name to Meta. Despite the rebranding of the parent company, the corporate structure has remained the same; however, Meta announced a plan to split the financial reports of the operating segments into Family of Apps and Reality Labs ( Meta, 2021a ). Facebook rationalized the change by emphasizing that rebranding was necessary to encompass the company’s expanded offering of products and technologies. The new name refers to the prospective vision of Meta to build a “metaverse” ( Lock, 2021 ): a new form of social network in an interactive virtual world that connects different users for the purpose of gaming, working and entertainment ( Forman, 2021 ). The context of the metaverse inhabits both the present and the future as an accumulation of different technologies that will be developed in the next decade ( Velazco, 2021 ). Consequently, Meta sees the metaverse as the successor of the mobile Internet, having a significant market and adoption potential ( Needleman, 2021 ). In the future, the company will focus on soft- and hardware development to create a unique virtual experience for users. To date, Facebook has already introduced two metaverse projects, the Horizon World and the Horizon Workrooms ( Paul, 2021b ).

The announcement of the rebranding had a significant impact on the capital market. On the day of the announcement, market capitalization increased by $20 billion to $900 billion ( Russolillo, 2021 ).

With the change to Meta, Facebook evolves into the fourth phase of the BMI life cycle and takes aim at an innovation trajectory.

Analysis of BM components and innovation activities

As shown beforehand, we structured the gathered data along with the three aspects of BMI – value creation innovation, new proposition innovation and value capture innovation.

Value creation innovation

New technology is a key factor in the reconfiguration of BMs ( Clauss, 2017 ). Meta’s decision to focus on the metaverse makes the company the forerunner of new technology with immense future potential ( Needleman, 2021 ). Although academics have already written about similar concepts, known as “extended reality” and “virtual worlds,” the commercialization of this technology has not yet materialized ( Dionisio et al. , 2013 ; Kelly, 2021 ). From an overarching perspective, a clear definition of the metaverse remains to be established, but experts assume that it will be a combination of technologies currently known as virtual, augmented and mixed realities ( Hall and Li, 2021 ; Lee et al. , 2021 ).

The so-called non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) represent another vital technology that plays a central role in the metaverse because of its capability to mimic real-world economic behavior ( Regner et al. , 2019 ). With its roots in the crypto industry, this blockchain-based technology facilitates designing of digital goods that are unique and highly secure against counterfeiting ( Clark, 2021 ). Despite the established maturity level that many of the technologies already have gained, the path to achieving a “feel like a hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world” ( Facebook, 2021a , b ) will not be quickly traversed. Along the same lines, the technological vision Meta announced is rather ambitious and will need constant utilization and expansion of Meta’s current technological base.

The capabilities needed for the new technologies are already partly available at Meta. In particular, the acquisition of Oculus was a crucial puzzle piece to prepare for the technological challenges of the metaverse ( Constine, 2014 ). The company’s newfound expertise in the virtual and augmented reality space means that Meta can count on having the necessary competencies at the hardware interface of the user and the network ( Desai et al. , 2014 ). These capabilities, such as the build-up, scaling, and operation of a social network and server infrastructures, are obviously present at Meta ( Weedon et al. , 2017 ). Apparent expertise gaps are in technologies that the company does not currently focus on, though they are relevant for achieving the overall vision of the metaverse, such as blockchain development ( Jeon et al. , 2021 ). Even though potentially not fully available at the company at the moment, such technologies can be acquired rapidly, considering the high financial stability and resource integration power that Meta has already proved to exercise multiple times ( Glick and Ruetschlin, 2019 ). In summary, Meta does not need to significantly revolutionize its capability base for the metaverse but can mostly rely on further revolutionary developments of its current competencies. Although additional expertise regarding new technologies such as NFT need to be acquired, they retain something of a complementary character.

In terms of processes, Meta may well already have the most relevant internal processes in place; thus, the company will rather need to focus on further increasing its efficiency than completely redesigning it ( Thompson, 2018 ). Supporting evidence for this claim is the announcement that the company does not plan to change its corporate structure ( Canales, 2021 ). Processes that will need further sharpening might include customer-facing processes needed for new monetization mechanisms or data security topics that are not relevant in the current social network environment but are likely to gain traction in the future.

Partnerships need to be differentiated into those with clients in the advertisement space and those that shape the metaverse ecosystems. As one of the leading advertisement outlets in the world, with over $84 billion in revenue from advertisement (comprising 97% of Meta’s overall revenues) in 2020 ( Facebook, 2021b ), Meta has already established relevant partnerships with leading corporations in this space ( Edwards, 2014 ). Even though some partners, such as Patagonia, have highlighted the shortcomings of Meta’s practices, the company has an excellent positioning ( Egan, 2021 ). In support of its metaverse vision, Meta will need to create new partnerships to strengthen the ecosystem and integrate other companies on the platform ( O'Flaherty, 2021 ). Examples of such cooperation include a hardware-focused partnership with the eyeglasses manufacturer Ray-Ban ( Meta, 2021b ) and software-focused cooperation as seen in online meetings with Microsoft ( Rodriguez, 2021a ).

Changes in the company’s value creation are focused primarily on one dimension – technology – and are therefore of a rather incremental nature.

New proposition innovation

Meta has communicated itself as a new platform enabling users “to do almost anything you can imagine—get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create” ( Meta, 2021c ). This self-description, however, constitutes little more than a visionary statement at present, considering that many relevant details for a truly functioning metaverse experience are still in the research stage ( Meta, 2021c ). The first prototype, “Horizon Home,” shows that the visionary offering of Meta might change users’ “how” in terms of the ways they will interact, without significantly changing the “what,” namely interaction ( Dwoskin, 2021 ). Moreover, exactly how users will create their virtual avatar as a high-quality rendering remains unclear, despite this feature representing a key aspect of virtual experience and interaction. In any event, Meta will still serve as a platform that enables users to connect and share content with other users ( Evans, 2021 ); the company only promises that it will offer a new user experience in the future, which will be enabled by technology. Nevertheless, this future capability includes the additional offering of new hardware components, such as Oculus virtual reality headsets and remotes, which will allow users to access the metaverse and experience it differently from their familiar participation ( O'Flaherty, 2021 ; Velazco, 2021 ). Such hardware can be seen as the gateway to the metaverse and are fundamental for the metaverse experience ( Meta, 2021c ; Oculus, 2021 ).

Reflecting its foundations as a social media giant with users across the globe, the new platform will be available globally and has the potential for mass-market adoption ( Needleman, 2021 ). Conceivably, future social media will take on the form of virtual presence ( Paul, 2021b ); along those lines, data up to this point have indicated that change will happen on both the demand and supply sides of the platform. Even as the platform continues to target private customers, Meta will additionally focus on the market for virtual reality hardware acquisitions ( Oculus, 2021 ). Despite changes in the private customer side, Meta will keep the focus on the advertising market while also expanding its efforts to participate in transactions for virtual reality hardware and services used for such applications as meetings, games or digital objects ( Meta, 2021a ) .

Facebook’s customer channels for direct marketing and sales are conducted through digital offerings and technologies. Reflecting the company’s established interaction with its private and business customers, the future platform model might build on these previous channels. In other words, Meta will expand its efforts to accommodate the newly added hardware offering while continuing to use existing partnerships with consumer electronic dealers and distributors to sell its Oculus equipment. Thus, the customer channels remain unchanged at this point in the process.

Changes in the value proposition are focused primarily on a new user experience but do not affect the core offering and are therefore incremental in nature.

Value capture innovation

In the case where Meta can deliver the new value proposition and offer the promised user experience for the metaverse, the firm could benefit from an increase in virtual connection and interaction across many areas of life. With a successful implementation, Meta could establish a platform BM and thereby capture value through three additional platform-based revenue streams from both private and business customers ( Eisenmann et al. , 2009 ; Parker et al. , 2016 ). In the first place, different payment models that include a variety of features and options, as currently offered by many digital platforms, could enable additional revenue streams. Second, Meta could participate in transactions made on one side or across both sides of the platform, such as communication, virtual experiences (e.g. gaming, exhibitions and sight-seeing) or the exchange of virtual artifacts ( Meta, 2021c ). These services can be provided by Meta “creators” or by businesses bringing their offerings in the metaverse. The third new revenue stream would result from Meta’s heavy expansion of its revenues through its hardware sales of Oculus accessories, as the latter represents the gateway to the metaverse ( Oculus, 2021 ). Additional revenues could also come from third-party licenses for compatible virtual reality devices and accessories, such as headsets, haptic gloves and controllers. Thus, these developments could also be implied by the rebranding and re-registration from “Facebook Inc.” to “Meta Platforms Inc.”

Revenues rely on existing revenue streams until a successful technology integration and user adaptation might create new revenue sources. The company’s cost structures might be affected by an increase in one-time investments in R&D and constant costs associated with value delivery. Therefore, value capturing innovations are subject to incremental change.

Factors influencing Facebook’s entrepreneurial decisions

As discussed above, despite their futuristic appearances, the modifications to the basic parts of Facebook’s BM toward the metaverse represent a gradual change rather than a drastic transformation. We hypothesize that a combination of factors mainly “pushed” Facebook toward these decisions, complemented by market opportunities that “pulled” the company into communicating radical changes in its BM.

Relevant external factors that might have pushed the announcement include the ongoing and publicly led debate regarding such topics as privacy invasion and the manipulation of elections ( Sadowski, 2021 ), hateful content affecting mental health ( Olson, 2021 ), fake news during the coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic ( Roose, 2021 ) and anti-competitive behavior ( Meisenzahl and Canales, 2021 ). Meanwhile, internal factors might be found in the inadequacies of the company culture, where dissent is discouraged and questionable managerial practices in a significant proportion of cases ( Rodriguez, 2019 ). The ongoing debate led to an increasing loss of reputation for the company, making it harder for the public “to believe that Facebook is a net good for society” ( Ghaffary, 2021 ). As a result of various scandals, top executives of the company were compelled to testify in front of Congress multiple times ( Rodriguez, 2021b ). Even though many cases against the Facebook corporation were due to practices by the social media business unit, the negative reputational effects were generalized and spread to other parts of the company, such as WhatsApp ( Statt, 2021 ).

At the same time, the company is facing a decreasing customer base in its social media unit, forecasting in-house a decline of 45% by 2023 among the target group of teenagers ( Roose, 2021 ). Reasons for the decline are manifold. For example, teens’ decreasing interest in the Facebook platform is a reflection of this group’s tendency to distinguish themselves from the older generation ( Press-Reynolds, 2021 ). In addition, the rise of new competitors is driving users to other platforms, such as Twitter, TikTok or YouTube Shorts, that are used for everyday social network interactions ( Press-Reynolds, 2021 ). Consequently, the Facebook platform is hampered by an aging userbase and will probably also lose its exposed position as a social media brand inside the Meta corporation ( Heath, 2021 ). At the same time, other parts of the Facebook corporation have gained traction; for example, teens spend most of their online social platform-related time on Instagram ( Leonhardt, 2021 ), and WhatsApp is the leading messaging service in the world ( Statista, 2021 ). This shift in user preferences may have led the management to conclude that the future of the corporation is not the social network platform Facebook, leading to the assessment that rebranding, even without radical impact on the BM, is the right entrepreneurial decision. Other mentioned reasons for this decision were the significant signaling effect on the internal organization as well as using rebranding as a recruiting vehicle to acquire the best talent ( Vaynerchuk, 2021 ).

Factors such as a worsening image, frequent and recent bad publicity, increasing competition, and a stagnating user base seem to have contributed to Facebook’s entrepreneurial decision making.

Factors such as faster technological change, the metaverse opportunity, and internal and external signaling effects seem to have contributed to Facebook’s entrepreneurial decision making.

Figure 5 provides an overview of the results of our analysis.

Conclusions

Theoretical implications.

The results of our analysis indicate that through its recent rebranding, Meta has embraced the option to gradually switch from an advertisement revenue model toward a transaction-based revenue model. Nevertheless, Meta’s core offerings intended to foster social community remain the same, even as the company aims to provide a more digital, virtual and augmented environment. Contrary to an increasing number of companies changing their BM from that of a hardware to a software company, Meta is strongly focusing on the development of hardware and software to make the metaverse accessible for the mass market and to encourage user loyalty by increasing switching costs. Thus, Meta’s strategic acquisition of Oculus, the planned partnership with hardware and software providers such as Ray-Ban, Microsoft and Rockstar Games, and the development of Horizon World and the Horizon Workroom has established the surrounding conditions to develop the most social network.

Our case analysis demonstrated that Meta aims to take high investments to transfer its BM into a virtual future. However, the existing internal capabilities, processes and partnerships do not provide evidence for a radical BM innovation for now. Consequently, the communication of the rebranding had a strong signaling effect on the capital markets but did not comprise a radical but rather an incremental change in the BM.

Practical implications

From our study, several relevant implications for managers and corporates are evident. The emergence of advanced digital technologies, the shortening of technology life cycles, and the changes in customer demands require corporations to constantly reimagine their BM and offerings to sustain competitiveness in a rapidly changing environment. Meta’s strategic virtual reality acquisitions do not change the “What-to-play” in the short run, even as they define “How-to-play” in the long run. Hence, the strategic acquisitions and the planned partnerships emphasize the necessity for businesses to operate in an ecosystem of valuable partnerships and alliances. In addition, critical reflection concerning ostentatious and public communications suggesting radical changes in the BM is essential. In this regard, the case analysis involving Meta demonstrated well that apparent BMI can be disguised in a fancy dress to distract from ingrained corporate challenges.

The rebranding of Facebook reveals certain features in common with the rebranding of Philip Morris that was announced in the introduction to this article. In particular, the rebranding was not attended by significant changes in the BM and occurred in response to the extensive reputational crises. Hence, rebranding appears to be a common mechanism that corporates may adopt as a signal to shareholders and society to retrieve trust that was forfeited due to harmful managerial practices and unethical standards.

Our study is a preliminary endeavor to understand the BM transition from Facebook to Meta. The rapid growth of Facebook over the last decades has shaped one of the most prominent entrepreneurial success stories. By advancing a strong vision to build the metaverse, Meta has once again demonstrated a strong entrepreneurial behavior in announcing that the company will use its existing capabilities, processes and partnerships to shift the adjacent BM into a more virtual future. Thus, the metaverse promises to provide a new experience for users and customers in terms of communication, work and entertainment. Nevertheless, further research is required to understand the potential uses and capabilities of this new virtual platform world, especially when the technology matures in a later phase.

Limitations

This study explores the BM transition from Facebook to Meta by applying a single case study methodology. Building on established concepts of BMI while collecting and analyzing publicly available data, the study aimed to determine whether Facebook’s rebranding could be characterized as a radical BMI or if the change was intended to serve as a way out of the company’s reputational crises. In summary, this qualitative study provides an in-depth understanding of Facebook’s rebranding. However, as stated, this investigation focused on one specific and prominent case. Therefore, additional research efforts might be needed to validate whether the research results can be transferred and applied to other companies as well as industries that pursue a BM transition. Due to the topicality of the rebranding, this study focuses primarily on secondary data to explore the transition from Facebook to Meta. This limitation suggests the potential benefit of enriching this study by conducting further studies that consider primary data. In particular, future research might explore the transition of Facebook at a more mature phase to identify whether the proposed metaverse technology comprises a feasible strategic vision or merely reflects an attempt at brand washing to distract from the company’s severe reputational crises.

Typical phases and evolution of the business model life cycle

BMI and its components

Distribution of data points in clusters

Facebook’s entrepreneurial journey

Case study results

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An Overview of Facebook’s Journey to Meta - A Case Study

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From Facebook to Meta

Why the Name Change Needed to Happen

Back on February 4, 2004, Facebook served only one principle: being an easier way for Harvard students to connect.

Back then, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg probably had no idea of what his social media platform would turn out to be. Soon, thousands of people started signing up on the platform. Word started getting around, and the rest is history.

Almost 2 decades have passed since then. And, although both Facebook and Mark have gone through their fair share of ups and downs, their biggest challenge is probably happening as we speak.

In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would leave Facebook’s name behind. And, instead, it will focus on the future. The future, in this case, is called ‘Meta’.

But, why exactly did this name change need to happen? Well, it all boils down to 2 simple reasons: adapting and evolving. Let’s take a closer look at both of them:

Every single brand, be it big or small, needs to adapt to what’s currently popular. And, this is exactly what Facebook is doing.

Now, some people might argue that Facebook made $29 billion in profit in 2020. Why would a brand that has generated this much success ever need to change something about itself?

The reason for that is simple. It’s so it can continue to generate success. Sure, Facebook might have made $29 billion in profit in the year 2020. However, that doesn’t mean that that success wouldn’t decrease the next year or the one after.

In the branding world, people that are in the same position as Mark Zuckerberg always have to look ahead. They play the long game, not only the one they currently have on their hands.

Zuckerberg has stated that “the metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started.”

Not only does Mark Zuckerberg wants to adapt to what is currently happening around the world. But, he also wants to be one step ahead of what will likely happen in the near future.

The metaverse didn’t just change a company’s name, logo, and colors, but the way that most people view it as well.

For years and years, people have dreamt of living in a futuristic world, one where AI, holograms, flying cars, or anything else your mind can think of was real. So basically, a world where an AI system like the one in “Ready Player One” was real.

Well, that’s exactly what the metaverse promises to achieve. Experiencing the metaverse can quite literally be a transformative experience.

And, while other brands have tried to go this far into the future, Facebook is the only one that has made it its most vital purpose.

However, saying and trying to achieve something is not the same as actually achieving it.

As we said earlier, both Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have gone through a lot of ups and downs. Could the metaverse end up being another up, or a down?

Well, there’s no way of actually knowing that answer. Sure, Facebook has a ton of resources that can take us into the metaverse.

But, will that ever happen? We’ll just have to wait and see.

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TEACHING MATERIALS

Blue ocean pedagogical materials, used in nearly 3,000 universities and in almost every country in the world, go beyond the standard case-based method. Our multimedia cases and interactive exercises are designed to help you build a deeper​ understanding of key blue ocean concepts, from blue ocean strategy to nondisruptive creation, developed by world-renowned professors   Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne . Currently, with over 20 Harvard bestselling cases .

CASES BY TOPIC

TEACHING GUIDE

Meta: Facebook’s Pivot to the Metaverse. A Dystopia or Blue Ocean Utopia?

Author(s):   KIM, W. Chan, MAUBORGNE, Renée, OLENICK, Michael

In October 2021, Facebook changed the parent corporation name to Meta and announced plans to build a metaverse, a 3D virtual world for work and fun. This case explores whether Meta’s metaverse is likely to be a blue ocean utopia for people and society at large or some form of dystopia. It is designed to create a lively classroom discussion and dives into issues ranging from the difference between value innovation and technology innovation to the potential danger of Meta, already one of the most powerful companies in the world, expanding its unfettered influence and control even further across its already three billion users. The case challenges students to explore the social, economic, and environmental implications of Meta’s proposed metaverse along with potential business models. The theory and tools of Blue Ocean Strategy are used in the analysis.

Teaching Objectives:

• Explore Meta’s metaverse and what they might do with their userbase of three billion people and Web3 technology.
• Learn the difference between value innovation and technology innovation.
• Dive into the pros and cons of the metaverse, including the social, economic, and environmental implications. Will Meta’s proposed metaverse create a blue ocean utopia or dystopia?
• Discuss social and economic issues regarding monopolization and Meta’s centralized control vs. a decentralized model of the metaverse.

English: HBSP   |   Case Centre   |   INSEAD

Teaching Note

Meta: Facebook's Pivot to the Metaverse. A Dystopia or Blue Ocean Utopia?

In October 2021, Facebook changed the parent corporation name to Meta and announced plans to build a metaverse, a 3D virtual world for work and fun. This case explores whether Meta’s metaverse is likely to be a blue ocean utopia for people and society at large or some form of dystopia. It is designed to create a lively classroom discussion and dives into issues ranging from the difference between value innovation and technology innovation to the potential danger of Meta, already one of the most powerful companies in the world, expanding its unfettered influence and control even further across its already three billion users. The case challenges students to explore the social, economic, and environmental implications of Meta’s proposed metaverse along with potential business models. The theory and tools of Blue Ocean Strategy are used in the analysis.

- Explore Meta’s metaverse and what they might do with their userbase of three billion people and Web3 technology. - Learn the difference between value innovation and technology innovation. - Dive into the pros and cons of the metaverse, including the social, economic, and environmental implications. Will Meta’s proposed metaverse create a blue ocean utopia or dystopia? -Discuss social and economic issues regarding monopolization and Meta’s centralized control vs. a decentralized model of the metaverse.

• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Virtual Reality
• Social Media
• Decentralization

W. Chan Kim

Renée Mauborgne

Michael Olenick

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Case spotlight: META: Facebook’s Pivot to the Metaverse. A Dystopia or Blue Ocean Utopia?

Author perspective

Who – the protagonist.

Mark Zuckerberg , co-founder and CEO of Facebook.

Having signed up virtually every person on earth able to use Facebook, the American social media giant was approaching the upper boundary of what’s possible for organic growth.

This led to Zuckerberg announcing a strategic pivot that would see Facebook rebranded as Meta , with an initial $10 billion invested to create a metaverse.

Zuckerberg’s vision would allow users to have virtual homes, workplaces, and games in the metaverse. Physical products that display anything which can be digitised in the real world would be replaced by virtual metaverse products. For example, a real phone would be replaced by a phone application.

Potential positives of the metaverse included business meetings offering interactivity well beyond video chats, elderly people projecting their bodies to again be young and healthy, or anyone being able to digitally visit some of the world’s most famous landmarks.

However, criticism of Meta ranged from an increase in screening/gaming addiction using virtual reality (VR) goggles to a lack of a vision and business model with tangible benefits.

After founding Facebook in 2004, Zuckerberg acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, and VR goggle maker Oculus for $2 billion in the same year.

On 29 October 2021, the business’ name was changed to Meta, and the metaverse vision outlined.

Facebook has just under three billion active daily users, more than the population of China and India combined.

Students face a number of dilemmas to answer such as is Meta more akin to technology innovation that advances technology without necessarily delivering a compelling leap in value for users? What are the strengths and weaknesses when it comes to Meta’s vision of social, economic, and environmental implications?

AUTHOR PERSPECTIVE 

Exploring the metaverse

Michael said: “Facebook is one of the most powerful and influential companies in the world and the metaverse is the next chapter, so-called Web3. When these two events came together - Facebook rebranding itself as Meta and making a multi-billion-dollar commitment to build a metaverse - this demanded an intellectual inquiry.

“What is the metaverse? Is Meta’s proposed metaverse on track to build a dystopia or blue ocean utopia for users and society? And is Meta’s business model likely to lead further issues of privacy violations and potential censorship? This case challenges students and executives to explore these issues which are likely to affect all of us.”

Producing a timely, timeless case

Michael continued: “While our aim was to produce a timeless case, it was attached to a pivotal event. We thought it was important to analyse and probe these issues in a timely fashion given the rising attention around metaverses in general, as well as Facebook so we don’t end up sleepwalking into a future that we don’t understand and, as a society, may regret. We wanted to be able to put this discussion out to the world earlier rather than later so students, executives, and policy makers can think about it.

The interest of Meta

He added: “The rebranding of Meta and its shift to the metaverse are topics of enormous interest across the globe, which makes the case very timely for faculty now and in the future. It is well suited for courses in strategy, technology, and innovation as well as social responsibility and policy.”

Ingredients of a good case

Michael commented: “Focus on an issue of importance. Analyse a case from an angle that matters, which provokes rich learning in the classroom. Build a strong narrative with high readability blended with a clear pedagogical purpose.

“It’s also important to tie a case together with questions and an in-depth teaching note. We don’t know if our Meta case achieved this, but we certainly tried.”

Share your feedback

Michael concluded: “We are excited about the rich classroom discussion this case is likely to foster. We believe it addresses an important and timely issue which is on track to directly affect the world we live in. If you have comments or feedback, please don’t hesitate to write to us at [email protected] .”

The authors

The protagonist

Educators can login to view a free educator preview copy of this case and its accompanying teaching note.

Thursday 16 June 2022   17h-17.45h (BST)

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In this free webinar experts from the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute will share their insights by profiling high-tech related Blue Ocean Strategy cases ranging from Meta’s metaverse to Stitch Fix and even brief touching on Ford’s infamous Edsel.

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11 Facebook Case Studies & Success Stories to Inspire You

Published: August 05, 2019

Although Facebook is one of the older social media networks, it's still a thriving platform for businesses who want to boost brand awareness.

With over 2.38 billion monthly active users , you can use the platform to spread the word about your business in a number of different ways -- from photos or videos to paid advertisements.

Because there are so many marketing options and opportunities on Facebook, It can be hard to tell which strategy is actually best for your brand.

If you're not sure where to start, you can read case studies to learn about strategies that marketing pros and similar businesses have tried in the past.

A case study will often go over a brand's marketing challenge, goals, a campaign's key details, and its results. This gives you a real-life glimpse at what led a marketing team to reach success on Facebook. Case studies also can help you avoid or navigate common challenges that other companies faced when implementing a new Facebook strategy.

To help you in choosing your next Facebook strategy, we've compiled a list of 11 great case studies that show how a number of different companies have succeeded on the platform.

Even if your company has a lower budget or sells a different product, we hope these case studies will inspire you and give you creative ideas for your own scalable Facebook strategy.

Facebook Brand Awareness Case Studies:

During the 2017 holiday season, the jewelry company Pandora wanted to boost brand awareness in the German market. They also wanted to see if video ads could have the same success as their other Facebook ad formats.

They began this experiment by working with Facebook to adapt a successful TV commercial for the platform. Here's a look at the original commercial:

The ad was cut down to a 15-second clip which shows a woman receiving a Pandora necklace from her partner. It was also cropped into a square size for mobile users. Pandora then ran the ad targeting German audiences between the ages of 18-50. It appeared in newsfeeds and as an in-stream video ad .

Results: According to the case study , the video campaign lifted brand sentiment during the holiday season, with a 10-point lift in favorability. While Pandora or the case study didn't disclose how they measured their favorability score, they note that the lift means that more consumers favored Pandora over other jewelers because of the ad.

Financially, the campaign also provided ROI with a 61% lift in purchases and a 42% increase in new buyers.

Video can be memorable, emotional, and persuasive. While the case study notes that Pandora always had success with ads and purchases, the jeweler saw that a video format could boost brand awareness even further.

In just 15 seconds, Pandora was able to tell a short story that their target audience could identify with while also showing off their product. The increase in favorability shows that audiences who saw the ad connected with it and preferred the jeweler over other companies because of the marketing technique.

Part of Pandora's success might also be due to the video's platform adaptation. Although they didn't create a specific video for the Facebook platform, they picked a commercial that had already resonated with TV audiences and tweaked it to grab attention of fast-paced Facebook users. This is a good example of how a company can be resourceful with the content it already has while still catering to their online audiences.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame , a HubSpot customer, wanted to boost brand awareness and get more ticket purchases to their museum. Since they'd mainly used traditional customer outreach strategies in the past, they wanted to experiment with more ways of reaching audiences on social media.

Because the museum's social media team recognized how often they personally used Facebook Messenger, they decided to implement a messaging strategy on the Hall of Fame's official business page.

From the business page, users can click the Get Started button and open a chat with the Hall of Fame. Through the chat, social media managers were able to quickly reply to questions or comments from fans, followers, and prospective visitors. The reps would also send helpful links detailing venue pricing, events, other promotions, and activities in the surrounding area.

Since the Messenger launch, they claim to have raised their audience size by 81% and sales from prospects by 12%. The company claims that this feature was so successful that they even received 54 messages on an Easter Sunday.

Being available to connect with your audiences through Messenger can be beneficial to your business and your brand. While the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame boosted purchases, they also got to interact with their audiences on a personal level. Their availability might have made them look like a more trustworthy, friendly brand that was actually interested in their fanbase rather than just sales.

Facebook Reach Case Study:

In early 2016, Buffer started to see a decline in their brand reach and engagement on Facebook due to algorithm changes that favored individuals rather than brands. In an effort to prevent their engagement and reach numbers from dropping even further.

The brand decided to cut their posting frequency by 50%. With less time focused on many posts, they could focus more time on creating fewer, better-quality posts that purely aimed at gaining engagement. For example, instead of posting standard links and quick captions, they began to experiment with different formats such as posts with multi-paragraph captions and videos. After starting the strategy in 2016, they continued it through 2018.

Here's an example of one an interview that was produced and shared exclusively on Facebook.

The Results: By 2018, Buffer claimed that the average weekly reach nearly tripled from 44,000 at the beginning of the experiment to 120,000. The page's average daily engagements also doubled from roughly 500 per day to around 1,000.

In 2018, Buffer claimed that their posts reached between 5,000 to 20,000 people, while posts from before the experiment reached less than 2,000.

Although Buffer began the experiment before major Facebook algorithm changes , they updated this case study in 2018 claiming that this strategy has endured platform shifts and is still providing them with high reach and engagement.

It can be easy to overpost on a social network and just hope it works. But constant posts that get no reach or engagement could be wasted your time and money. They might even make your page look desperate.

What Buffer found was that less is more. Rather than spending your time posting whatever you can, you should take time to brainstorm and schedule out interesting posts that speak directly to your customer.

Facebook Video Views Case Studies:

Gearing up for Halloween in 2016, Tomcat, a rodent extermination company, wanted to experiment with a puppet-filled, horror-themed, live video event. The narrative, which was created in part by their marketing agency, told the story of a few oblivious teenage mice that were vacationing in a haunted cabin in the woods. At peak points of the story, audiences were asked to use the comments to choose which mouse puppet would die next or how they would die.

Prior to the video event, Tomcat also rolled out movie posters with the event date, an image of the scared mouse puppets, and a headline saying, "Spoiler: They all die!"

Results: It turns out that a lot of people enjoy killing rodents. The live video got over 2.3 million unique views , and 21% of them actively participated. As an added bonus, the video also boosted Tomcat's Facebook fanbase by 58% and earned them a Cyber Lion at the 2017 Cannes Lions awards.

Here's a hilarious sizzle reel that shows a few clips from the video and a few key stats:

This example shows how creative content marketing can help even the most logistical businesses gain engagement. While pest control can be a dry topic for a video, the brand highlighted it in a creative and funny way.

This study also highlights how interactivity can provide huge bonuses when it comes to views and engagement. Even though many of the viewers knew all the rats would die, many still participated just because it was fun.

Not only might this peak brand interest from people who hadn't thought that deeply about pest control, but interactivity can also help a video algorithmically. As more people comment, share, and react to a live video, there's more likelihood that it will get prioritized and displayed in the feeds of others.

In 2017, HubSpot's social media team embarked on an experiment where they pivoted their video goals from lead generation to audience engagement. Prior to this shift, HubSpot had regularly posted Facebook videos that were created to generate leads. As part of the new strategy, the team brainstormed a list of headlines and topics that they thought their social media audience would actually like, rather than just topics that would generate sales.

Along with this pivot, they also experimented with other video elements including video design, formatting, and size .

Results: After they started to launch the audience-friendly videos, they saw monthly video views jump from 50,000 to 1 million in mid-2017.

Creating content that caters to your fanbase's interests and the social platform it's posted on can be much more effective than content that seeks out leads.

While videos with the pure goal of selling a product can fall flat with views and engagement, creative videos that intrigue and inform your audiences about a topic they relate to can be a much more effective way to gain and keep your audience. Once the audience trusts you and consumes your content regularly, they might even trust and gain interest in your products.

Facebook App Installs Case Study:

Foxnext games.

FoxNext Games, a video game company owned by 20th Century Fox, wanted to improve the level of app installs for one of its newest releases, Marvel Strike Force. While FoxNext had previously advertised other games with Facebook video ads, they wanted to test out the swipe-able photo carousel post format. Each photo, designed like a playing card, highlighted a different element of the game.

The add offered a call-to-action button that said "Install Now" and lead to the app store where it could be downloaded. FoxNext launched it on both Facebook and Instagram. To see if the carousel was more efficient than video campaigns, they compared two ads that advertised the same game with each format.

Results: According to Facebook , the photo ads delivered a 6% higher return on ad spend, 14% more revenue, 61% more installs, and 33% lower cost per app install.

Takeaways If your product is visual, a carousel can be a great way to show off different elements of it. This case study also shows how designing ads around your audience's interest can help each post stand out to them. In this scenario, FoxNext needed to advertise a game about superheroes. They knew that their fanbase was interested in gaming, adventure, and comic books, so they created carousels that felt more like playing cards to expand on the game's visual narrative.

Facebook Lead Gen Case Study:

Major impact media.

In 2019, Major Impact Media released a case study about a real-estate client that wanted to generate more leads. Prior to working with Major Impact, the Minneapolis, Minnesota brokerage hired another firm to build out an online lead generation funnel that had garnered them no leads in the two months it was active. They turned to Major Impact looking for a process where they could regularly be generating online leads.

As part of the lead generation process, the marketing and brokerage firms made a series of Facebook ads with the lead generation objective set. Major Impact also helped the company build a CRM that could capture these leads as they came in.

Results: Within a day, they received eight leads for $2.45 each. In the next 90 days, the marketing firm claimed the ads generated over 370 local leads at the average cost of $6.77 each. Each lead gave the company their name, email, and phone number.

Although these results sound like a promising improvement, readers of this case study should keep in mind that no number of qualified leads or ROI was disclosed. While the study states that leads were gained, it's unclear which of them lead to actual sales -- if any.

This shows how Facebook ad targeting can be helpful when you're seeking out leads from a specific audience in a local area. The Minneapolis brokerage's original marketing and social media strategies weren't succeeding because they were looking for a very specific audience of prospective buyers in the immediate area.

Ad targeting allowed their posts to be placed on the news feeds of people in the area who might be searching for real estate or have interests related to buying a home. This, in turn, might have caused them more success in gaining leads.

Facebook Engagement Case Study:

When the eyewear brand Hawkers partnered up with Spanish clothing brand El Ganso for a joint line of sunglasses, Hawkers' marketing team wanted to see which Facebook ad format would garner the most engagement. Between March and April of 2017, they launched a combination of standard ads and collection ads on Facebook.

While their standard ads had a photo, a caption and a call-to-action linking to their site, the collection ads offered a header image or video, followed by smaller images of sunglasses from the line underneath.

Image from Digital Training Academy

To A/B test ad effectiveness of the different ad types, Hawkers showed half of its audience standard photo ads while the other half were presented with the collection format. The company also used Facebook's Audience Lookalike feature to target the ads their audiences and similar users in Spain.

Results: The collection ad boosted engagement by 86% . The collection ads also saw a 51% higher rate of return than the other ads.

This study shows how an ad that shows off different elements of your product or service could be more engaging to your audience. With collection ads, audiences can see a bunch of products as well as a main image or video about the sunglass line. With a standard single photo or video, the number of products you show might be limited. While some users might not respond well to one image or video, they might engage if they see a number of different products or styles they like.

Facebook Conversion Case Study:

Femibion from merck.

Femibion, a German family-planning brand owned by Merck Consumer Health, wanted to generate leads by offering audiences a free baby planning book called "Femibion BabyPlanung." The company worked with Facebook to launch a multistage campaign with a combination of traditional image and link ads with carousel ads.

The campaign began with a cheeky series of carousel ads that featured tasteful pictures of "baby-making places," or locations where women might conceive a child. The later ads were a more standard format that displayed an image of the book and a call-to-action.

When the first ads launched in December 2016, they were targeted to female audiences in Germany. In 2017, during the later stages of the campaign, the standard ads were retargeted to women who had previously interacted with the carousel ads. With this strategy, people who already showed interest would see more ads for the free product offer. This could cause them to remember the offer or click when they saw it a second time.

Results: By the time the promotion ended in April 2017, ads saw a 35% increase in conversion rate. The company had also generated 10,000 leads and decreased their sample distribution cost by two times.

This case study shows how a company successfully brought leads through the funnel. By targeting women in Germany for their first series of creative "baby-making" ads, they gained attention from a broad audience. Then, by focusing their next round of ads on women who'd already shown some type of interest in their product, they reminded those audiences of the offer which may have enabled those people to convert to leads.

Facebook Product Sales Case Study

In an effort to boost sales from its Latin American audiences, Samsung promoted the 2015 Argentina launch of the Galaxy S6 smartphone with a one-month Facebook campaign.

The campaign featured three videos that highlighted the phone's design, camera, and long battery life respectively.

One video was released each week and all of them were targeted to men and women in Argentina. In the fourth week of the campaign, Samsung launched more traditional video and photo ads about the product. These ads were specifically targeted to people who'd engaged with the videos and their lookalike audiences.

Results: Samsung received 500% ROI from the month-long campaign and a 7% increase in new customers.

Like Femibion, Samsung tested a multiple ad strategy where the targeting got more specific as the promotions continued. They too saw the benefit of targeting ads to users who already showed interest in the first rounds of advertisements. This strategy definitely seems like one that could be effective when trying to gain more qualified leads.

Facebook Store Visits Case Study:

Church's chicken.

The world's third-largest chicken restaurant, Church's Chicken, wanted to see if they could use Facebook to increase in-restaurant traffic. From February to October of 2017, the chain ran a series of ads with the "Store Traffic" ad objectives. Rather than giving customers a link to a purchasing or order page, these ads offer users a call-to-action that says "Get Directions." The dynamic store-traffic ad also gives users the store information for the restaurant closest to them.

Image from Facebook

The ads ran on desktop and mobile newsfeeds and were targeted at people living near a Church's Chicken who were also interested in "quick-serve restaurants." The study also noted that third-party data was used to target customers who were "big spenders" at these types of restaurants.

To measure the results, the team compared data from Facebook's store-reporting feature with data from all of its locations.

Results: The ads resulted in over 592,000 store visits with an 800% ROI. Each visit cost the company an average of $1.14. The ROI of the campaign was four times the team's return goal.

If you don't have an ecommerce business, Facebook ads can still be helpful for you if they're strategized properly. In this example, Church's ads targeted locals who like quick-serve restaurants and served them a dynamic ad with text that notified them of a restaurant in their direct area. This type of targeting and ad strategy could be helpful to small businesses or hyperlocal businesses that want to gain foot traffic or awareness from the prospective customers closest to them.

Navigating Case Studies

If you're a marketer that wants to execute proven Facebook strategies, case studies will be incredibly helpful for you. If the case studies on the list above didn't answer one of your burning Facebook questions, there are plenty of other resources and success stories online.

As you look for a great case study to model your next campaign strategy, look for stories that seem credible and don't feel too vague. The best case studies will clearly go over a company's mission, challenge or mission, process, and results.

Because many of the case studies you'll find are from big businesses, you might also want to look at strategies that you can implement on a smaller scale. For example, while you may not be able to create a full commercial at the production quality of Pandora, you might still be able to make a lower-budget video that still conveys a strong message to your audience.

If you're interested in starting a paid campaign, check out this helpful how-to post . If you just want to take advantage of free options, we also have some great information on Facebook Live and Facebook for Business .

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Meta to pay $1.4b to settle texas facial recognition suit over collecting data without consent.

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Meta Platforms has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to resolve the state’s lawsuit accusing the Facebook parent of illegally using facial-recognition technology to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent.

The terms of the settlement, disclosed on Tuesday, mark the largest accord ever by any single state, according to the lawyers for Texas, whose legal team included the plaintiffs firm Keller Postman.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022, was the first major case to be brought under Texas’ 2009 biometric privacy law , according to law firms tracking the litigation.

A provision of the law provides damages of up to $25,000 per violation.

Texas accused Facebook of capturing biometric information “billions of times” from photos and videos that users uploaded to the social media platform as part of a free, discontinued feature called “Tag Suggestions.”

A spokesperson for Meta said the company is pleased to resolve the matter and looks forward to “exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers.”

It has continued to deny any wrongdoing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement said the settlement marks the state’s “commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights.”

Texas and Meta said they reached an accord in May, weeks before the start of a trial in state court was scheduled to begin.

Meta separately agreed to pay $650 million in 2020 to settle a biometric privacy class action that was brought under an Illinois privacy law that is considered one of the nation’s most stringent.

The company also denied wrongdoing.

Alphabet’s Google separately is fighting a lawsuit by Texas  accusing the company of violating the state’s biometric law.

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Facebook parent Meta posts stronger-than-expected Q2 results, sending shares higher after hours

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SAN FRANCISCO – Investments in artificial intelligence will account for a significant increase in Facebook parent company Meta's expenses in the coming year, but stronger-than-expected revenue from its advertising business was enough to reassure investors that its business is on the right track.

Meta Platforms Inc. reported stronger-than-expected results for the second quarter on Wednesday, sending shares sharply higher in after-hours trading. While it didn't say how much it expects to spend on AI next year, the company made it clear it would be significant.

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The prospect of soaring expenses can often spook investors , but analysts said Meta's latest results show it can afford it, at least for now.

“The market’s positive response to Meta’s earnings report is a bellwether for AI stocks. If a company can show strong results from its core business, its investments in AI will be seen more positively. If the core business is showing any sign of weakness — as we saw last week with Alphabet’s YouTube — then the stock may seem more risky,” said Debra Aho Williamson founder and chief analyst at Sonata Insights.

She added that Meta stands out from other tech companies with AI ambitions because it already brings in a “massive amount” of advertising revenue — rather than trying to build a new business from scratch.

“And unlike Google, which is grappling with making changes that will impact its core ad business, most of Meta’s AI investments are either aimed at making advertising on its properties work better or at building new features that could eventually become revenue drivers,” Williamson said.

The Menlo Park, California-based company earned $13.47 billion, or $5.16 per share, in the April-June period. That's up 73% from $7.8 billion, or $2.98 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue rose 22% to $39.07 billion from $32 billion.

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $4.72 per share on revenue of $38.26 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

“We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement. During a conference call with analysts, Zuckerberg said Meta is in a ”fortunate position" where strong results give it the opportunity to invest in the future.

The number of daily active users for Meta's family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — was 3.27 billion for June, an increase of 7% from a year earlier. The company no longer breaks out user figures for Facebook as it had in the past. The company did disclose recently that WhatsApp has reached more than 100 million monthly users in the U.S. and Zuckerberg said that Threads, Meta's X rival, is about to hit more than 200 million monthly users.

Meta said it expects its third-quarter revenue to land in the range of $38.5 billion to $41 billion. Analysts are expecting $39.1 billion.

The company hasn't given guidance for 2025 yet — it said it will do so during its fourth-quarter earnings call — but it expects infrastructure costs to be a “significant driver of expense growth” in the coming year. Like other big tech companies, Meta is investing heavily in building its artificial intelligence capacity, including in data centers, and expects “significant capital expenditures growth in 2025 as we invest to support our artificial intelligence research and product development efforts.”

Meta is in a good position to grow “at a much faster pace than the competition in both the AI and ad spaces going forward,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com.

“That’s because Zuckerberg’s company keeps showing signs that it is able to keep growing at the 20%+ per quarter level in a much more efficient way than other big tech peers, such as Alphabet and Microsoft, for example; which are not only struggling to keep revenue growth in the double digits, but also are progressively taking a bigger hit on the margins side,” he added.

Monteiro added that Meta's strategy of focusing its growth on younger users outside of the U.S. appears to be paying off, though the numbers “would have been even better” were it not for its Reality Labs segment dragging revenue lower.

Meta's stock rose $23.67, or 5%, to 498.50 in after-hours trading.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Meta to pay Texas $1.4 billion for using facial recognition technology without users’ permission

Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Facebook parent company in 2022, claiming it had used personal biometric data without permission.

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Facebook’s parent company Meta will pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of using personal biometric data without users’ authorization.

The 2022 lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in state court, alleged that Meta had been using facial recognition software on photos uploaded to Facebook without Texans’ consent.

Paxton’s office said this is the largest settlement ever obtained by a single state and the largest related to privacy ever secured by a state attorney general. The settlement will be paid over five years. The attorney general’s office did not say whether the money from the settlement would go into the state’s general fund or if it would be distributed in some other way.

“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights. Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” Paxton said in a statement.

The settlement, announced Tuesday, does not act as an admission of guilt and Meta maintains no wrongdoing.

This was the first lawsuit Paxton’s office argued under a 2009 state law that protects Texans’ biometric data, like fingerprints and facial scans. The law requires businesses to inform and get consent from individuals before collecting such data. It also limits sharing this data, except in certain cases like helping law enforcement or completing financial transactions. Businesses must protect this data and destroy it within a year after it's no longer needed.

In 2011, Meta introduced a feature known as Tag Suggestions to make it easier for users to tag people in their photos. According to Paxton’s office, the feature was turned on by default and ran facial recognition on users’ photos, automatically capturing data protected by the 2009 law. That system was discontinued in 2021, with Meta saying it deleted over 1 billion people’s individual facial recognition data.

As part of the settlement, Meta must notify the attorney general’s office of anticipated or ongoing activities that may fall under the state’s biometric data laws. If Texas objects, the parties have 60 days to attempt to resolve the issue.

Meta officials said the settlement will make it easier for the company to discuss the implications and requirements of the state’s biometric data laws with the attorney general’s office, adding that data protection and privacy are core priorities for the firm.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers,” a Meta spokesperson said Tuesday.

Meta has about a month to pay the first installment of $500 million to the state. Subsequent installments of $225 million each will be paid annually from 2025 to 2028.

Consumer Reports, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, commended Paxton for the lawsuit but noted it was an outliner. In a statement, the group said that states have brought too few cases against privacy violations.

“As companies compete to build large-scale AI models, the scramble for consumer data threatens to become a race to the bottom, so enforcement agencies must keep a watchful eye for unfair data collection practices,” said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst at Consumer Reports.

The settlement comes at a time when big tech is growing its presence in Texas — and amid state efforts to regulate the industry.

Last year, state legislators passed the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, which went into effect at the beginning of this month and requires businesses to get permission from users for processing sensitive personal data. It also grants consumers rights to access and delete their data as well as stop data collection.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently sent a legal challenge to Texas' social media law — which prevents large social media companies from censoring users' content based on political viewpoints — back to a lower court for further analysis.

Paxton sued Google in 2022, alleging that the company illegally stored data on facial geometry and voiceprints without informing users. Similar lawsuits in Illinois and Arizona resulted in substantial settlements.

In 2020, Texas led 15 states in an antitrust lawsuit against Google, which is expected to go to court next year. The state also participated in a separate lawsuit over Android app distribution and payment processing last year, with Google paying $700 million to settle. In addition, Google settled a deceptive advertising claim with Texas in 2023 for $8 million.

Texas has supported Epic Games' antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company’s app distribution and payment monopolization stifles competition.

Consumer Reports encouraged Paxton to pursue rigorous enforcement of the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act.

Disclosure: Apple, Facebook and Google have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here .

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Correction, July 30, 2024 at 12:03 p.m. : An earlier version of this story said the Texas attorney general's office announced the settlement on Monday. It was on Tuesday.

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Hacking the Case Interview

If you’re interviewing for a business or product strategy role at Meta (Facebook), there is a good chance that you’ll receive at least one case study interview, which is also known as a case interview. Meta roles that include case study interviews as part of the interview process include:

• Business Development
• Product Manager
• Product Marketing
• Product Strategy
• Strategy and Operations

To land a job offer for these roles at Meta, you’ll need to ace every single one of your case interviews. While Meta case study interviews may seem ambiguous and challenging at first, know that they can be mastered with proper preparation.

If you are preparing for an upcoming Meta case study interview, we have you covered. In this comprehensive Meta case interview guide, we’ll cover:

• What is a Meta case study interview
• Why Meta uses case study interviews
• The 6 steps to ace any Meta case study interview
• Meta case study interview examples and answers
• Meta case study interview tips
• Recommended Meta case interview resources

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land tech and consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

What is a Meta Case Study Interview?

Meta case study interviews, also known as Meta case interviews, are 20- to 30-minute exercises in which you are placed in a hypothetical business situation and are asked to find a solution or make a recommendation.

First, you’ll create a framework that shows the approach you would take to solve the case. Then, you’ll collaborate with the interviewer, answering a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions that will give you the information and data needed to develop an answer. Finally, you’ll deliver your recommendation at the end of the case.

Case study interviews have traditionally been used by consulting firms to assess a candidate’s potential to become a successful consultant. However, now a days, many companies with ex-consultants use case studies to assess a candidate’s capabilities. Since Meta has so many former consultants in its business roles, you’ll likely encounter at least one case study interview.

The business problems that you’ll be given in a Meta case study interview will likely be real challenges that Meta faces today:

• Usage of Facebook has dropped by nearly 15% over the past year. What is causing this and what can Meta do to address this?
• How can Meta increase ad revenues from its B2B customers?
• How should Meta deal with “fake news” in users’ newsfeeds?
• How can Meta increase user engagement despite the rise in new social media platforms such as Tik Tok?

Depending on what team at Meta you are interviewing for, you may be given a business problem that is relevant to that specific team.

Although there is a wide range of business problems you could possibly be given in your Meta case interview, the fundamental case interview strategies to solve each problem is the same. If you learn the right strategies and get enough practice, you’ll be able to solve any Meta case study interview.

Why does Meta Use Case Study Interviews?

Meta uses case study interviews because your performance in a case study interview is a measure of how well you would do on the job. Meta case interviews assess a variety of different capabilities and qualities needed to successfully complete job duties and responsibilities.

Meta's case study interviews primarily assess five things:

• Logical, structured thinking : Can you structure complex problems in a clear, simple way?
• Analytical problem solving : Can you read, interpret, and analyze data well?
• Business acumen : Do you have sound business judgment and intuition?
• Communication skills : Can you communicate clearly, concisely, and articulately?
• Personality and cultural fit : Are you coachable and easy to work with?

Since all of these qualities can be assessed in just a 20- to 30-minute case, Meta case study interviews are an effective way to assess a candidate’s capabilities.

The 6 Steps to Solve Any Meta Case Study Interview

In general, there are six steps to solve any Meta case study interview.

1. Understand the case

Your Meta case interview will begin with the interviewer giving you the case background information. While the interviewer is speaking, make sure that you are taking meticulous notes on the most important pieces of information. Focus on understanding the context of the situation and the objective of the case.

Don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions if you do not understand something. You may want to summarize the case background information back to the interviewer to confirm your understanding of the case.

The most important part of this step is to verify the objective of the case. Not answering the right business question is the quickest way to fail a case interview.

2. Structure the problem

The next step is to develop a framework to help you solve the case. A framework is a tool that helps you structure and break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable components. Another way to think about frameworks is brainstorming different ideas and organizing them into different categories.

For a complete guide on how to create tailored and unique frameworks for each case, check out our article on case interview frameworks .

Before you start developing your framework, it is completely acceptable to ask the interviewer for a few minutes so that you can collect your thoughts and think about the problem.

Once you have identified the major issues or areas that you need to explore, walk the interviewer through your framework. They may ask a few questions or provide some feedback.

3. Kick off the case

Once you have finished presenting your framework, you’ll start diving into different areas of your framework to begin solving the case. How this process will start depends on whether the case interview is candidate-led or interviewer-led.

If the case interview is a candidate-led case, you’ll be expected to propose what area of your framework to start investigating. So, propose an area and provide a reason for why you want to start with that area. There is generally no right or wrong area of your framework to pick first.

If the case interview is interviewer-led, the interviewer will tell you what area of the framework to start in or directly give you a question to answer.

4. Solve quantitative problems

Meta case study interviews may have some quantitative aspect to them. For example, you may be asked to calculate a certain profitability or financial metric. You could also be asked to estimate the size of a particular market or to estimate a particular figure.

The key to solving quantitative problems is to lay out a structure or approach upfront with the interviewer before doing any math calculations. If you lay out and present your structure to solve the quantitative problem and the interviewer approves of it, the rest of the problem is just simple execution of math.

5. Answer qualitative questions

Meta case study interviews may also have qualitative aspects to them. You may be asked to brainstorm a list of potential ideas. You could also be asked to provide your opinion on a business issue or situation.

The key to answering qualitative questions is to structure your answer. When brainstorming a list of ideas, develop a structure to help you neatly categorize all of your ideas. When giving your opinion on a business issue or situation, provide a summary of your stance or position and then enumerate the reasons that support it.

6. Deliver a recommendation

In the last step of the Meta case interview, you’ll present your recommendation and provide the major reasons that support it. You do not need to recap everything that you have done in the case, so focus on only summarizing the facts that are most important.

It is also good practice to include potential next steps that you would take if you had more time or data. These can be areas of your framework that you did not have time to explore or lingering questions that you do not have great answers for.

Meta Case Study Interview Examples and Answers

Example #1 : What are some areas that Meta should invest in?

Sample solution: To answer this question, it may be helpful to clarify what Meta's primary objective is. Are they looking to increase profits, revenues, number of users, or user engagement? The ideas that you brainstorm may vary depending on their actual goals.

Next, develop a framework to organize your ideas. You may want to think about areas of investments as short-term investments and long-term investments. You could brainstorm short-term investments and long-term investments for each of Meta's growth objectives.

Example #2 : Should Meta enter the job search platform market?

Sample solution: This is a market entry case. Potential areas you should consider looking into in your framework include: the attractiveness of the job search platform market, the competitive landscape, Meta's capabilities, and the expected profitability from entering the market.

Example #3 : Facebook Groups has seen a 15% drop in usage over the past year. How would you determine what is causing this drop?

Sample solution: You can break down usage by the number of users and the average level of engagement per user. This can be the first major area of your framework, determining the exact quantitative driver behind the drop in usage. Once you understand whether the issue is due to a decline in the number of users or a decline in engagement, you can try to understand qualitatively why this happening.

You could look into potential areas such as whether customer needs or preferences have changed, whether competitors have made any strategic moves, whether Meta has made any recent changes to its platform, or whether there are new market trends affecting Facebook Groups.

Example #4 : How would you estimate how many birthday posts occur on Facebook in a given day?

Sample solution: This is an estimation question. Before you do any math calculations, make sure to lay out a structure or approach on how you would calculate this figure.

You may want to start by estimating the number of people that use Facebook and divide that by 365 to determine the number of people that have a birthday on any given day. Then, estimate the average number of friends a person has on Facebook and the percentage of friends that would make a birthday post. Multiplying these figures together will give you an estimate of the number of birthday posts on Facebook in a given day.

Example #5 : How would you sell Meta advertising to a potential client?

Sample solution: To develop an effective marketing strategy, you may want to look into the client’s needs, competitor offerings, and Meta advertising’s features or benefits. Exploring these three areas will help you identify the features or benefits of Facebook advertising that are superior to competitor products that the client also values.

Example #6 : How can Meta better compete in the ads market?

Sample solution: When thinking of ways for Meta to better compete in the ads market, we can consider all of the stakeholders involved in Meta's business to come up with a comprehensive list of ideas. The major stakeholders are Meta's users and advertisers.

Therefore, Meta can make its platform a better user experience for its users and advertisers. For users, they want ads that are relevant, safe, and trustworthy. For advertisers, they want to run ads with high targeting specificity, low cost, and easy setup and maintenance.

Example #7 : How would you identify potential partners for Meta to work with?

Sample solution: The first step in solving this case is to identify what Meta's objective or goal is with a potential partnership. Are they trying to acquire new users? Or are they trying to increase user engagement?

Next, you can come up with a framework to assess the attractiveness of a partnership with a particular company. You may want to look into areas such as the partner’s capabilities, expected synergies, and expected profitability.

Example #8 : What are Meta's challenges in their international markets?

Sample solution: When answering this question, consider what are the major types of differences between the United States and other countries. Create a framework that shows the most important characteristics or qualities of international markets. One potential framework may look into customer needs and preferences, the competitive landscape, market trends, and Meta's capabilities to execute in international markets.

Example #9 : How would you balance content from the different number of platforms on Facebook?

Sample solution: To balance content, it is helpful to first create a framework that assesses the ideal qualities or characteristics that good content has. You may want to assess the content’s level of engagement, the content’s trust and safety, and the likelihood that the content will not drive users away from Facebook and onto other platforms.

You can use this framework to assess each piece of content across all of the platforms on Facebook to determine which content is best to show. It may be beneficial to also diversify the platforms that content is pulled from so that users do not grow too attached to a particular platform outside of Facebook.

Example #10 : Let’s say that Meta is considering getting into the ride share business. What should they consider when making the decision on whether or not to enter?

Sample solution: This is a market entry case and the approach is similar to Example #2. Potential areas you should consider looking into in your framework include: the attractiveness of the ride share market, the competitive landscape, the company’s capabilities, and the expected profitability.

Meta Case Study Interview Tips

Below are eight of our best tips to help you perform your best during your Meta case study interview.

1. Familiarize yourself with Meta's business model

If you don’t understand Meta's business model, it will be challenging for you to do well in their case interviews. Therefore, you should know that Meta makes the majority of its revenue by selling advertising. You should also be familiar with the products and services that Meta offers for the specific team you are interviewing for.

2. Read recent news articles on Meta

A lot of the times, the cases you’ll see in a Meta case study interview are real business issues that the company faces. Reading up on the latest Meta news will give you a sense of what Meta's biggest challenges are and what major business decisions they face today. There is a good chance that your case study interview will be similar to something that you have read in the news.

3. Verify the objective of the case 

Answering the wrong business problem will waste a lot of time during your Meta case study interview. Therefore, the most critical step of the case interview is to verify the objective of the case with the interviewer. Make sure that you understand what the primary business issue is and what overall question you are expected to answer at the end of the case.

4. Ask clarifying questions

Do not be afraid to ask questions. You will not be penalized for asking questions that are important and relevant to the case. 

Great questions to ask include asking for the definition of an unfamiliar term, asking questions that clarify the objective of the issue, and asking questions to strengthen your understanding of the business situation.

5. Do not use memorized frameworks

Interviewers can tell when you are using memorized frameworks from popular case interview prep books. Meta values creativity and intellect. Therefore, make every effort to create a custom, tailored framework for each case that you get.

6. Always connect your answers to the case objective

Throughout the case, make sure you are connecting each of your answers back to the overall business problem or question. What implications does your answer have on the overall business problem?

Many candidates make the mistake of answering case questions correctly, but they don’t take the initiative to tie their answer back to the case objective.

7. Communicate clearly and concisely

In a Meta case study interview, it can be tempting to answer the interviewer’s question and then continue talking about related topics or ideas. However, you have a limited amount of time to solve a Meta case, so it is best to keep your answers concise and to the point.

Answer the interviewer’s question, summarize how it impacts the case objective, and then move onto the next important issue or question.

8. Be enthusiastic

Meta wants to hire candidates that love their job and will work hard. Displaying enthusiasm shows that you are passionate about working at Meta. Having a high level of enthusiasm and energy also makes the interview more enjoyable for the interviewer. They will be more likely to have a positive impression of you.

Recommended Meta Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to land a Meta job offer:

For help landing interviews

• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

For help passing case interviews

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with a former Bain interviewer.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.

For help passing behavioral & fit interviews

• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer.

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A new llama emerges —

The first gpt-4-class ai model anyone can download has arrived: llama 405b, "open source ai is the path forward," says mark zuckerberg, misusing the term..

Benj Edwards - Jul 23, 2024 8:01 pm UTC

In the AI world, there's a buzz in the air about a new AI language model released Tuesday by Meta: Llama 3.1 405B . The reason? It's potentially the first time anyone can download a GPT-4-class large language model (LLM) for free and run it on their own hardware. You'll still need some beefy hardware: Meta says it can run on a "single server node," which isn't desktop PC-grade equipment. But it's a provocative shot across the bow of "closed" AI model vendors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Further Reading

"Llama 3.1 405B is the first openly available model that rivals the top AI models when it comes to state-of-the-art capabilities in general knowledge, steerability, math, tool use, and multilingual translation," says Meta. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls 405B "the first frontier-level open source AI model."

In the AI industry, "frontier model" is a term for an AI system designed to push the boundaries of current capabilities. In this case, Meta is positioning 405B among the likes of the industry's top AI models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4o , Claude's 3.5 Sonnet , and Google Gemini 1.5 Pro .

A chart published by Meta suggests that 405B gets very close to matching the performance of GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in benchmarks like MMLU (undergraduate level knowledge), GSM8K (grade school math), and HumanEval (coding).

But as we've noted many times since March , these benchmarks aren't necessarily scientifically sound and don't convey the subjective experience of interacting with AI language models. In fact, this traditional slate of AI benchmarks is so generally useless to laypeople that even Meta's PR department just posted a few images of numerical charts without attempting explain their significance in any detail.

We've instead found that measuring the subjective experience of using a conversational AI model (through what might be called "vibemarking") on A/B leaderboards like Chatbot Arena is a better way to judge new LLMs. In the absence of Chatbot Arena data, Meta has provided the results of its own human evaluations of 405B's outputs that seem to show Meta's new model holding its own against GPT-4 Turbo and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Whatever the benchmarks, early word on the street (after the model leaked on 4chan yesterday) seems to match the claim that 405B is roughly equivalent to GPT-4. It took a lot of expensive computer training time to get there—and money, of which the social media giant has plenty to burn. Meta trained the 405B model on over 15 trillion tokens of training data scraped from the web (then parsed, filtered, and annotated by Llama 2), using more than 16,000 H100 GPUs.

So what's with the 405B name? In this case, "405B" means 405 billion parameters, and parameters are numerical values that store trained information in a neural network. More parameters translate to a larger neural network powering the AI model, which generally (but not always) means more capability, such as better ability to make contextual connections between concepts. But larger-parameter models have a tradeoff in needing more computing power (AKA "compute") to run.

We've been expecting the release of a 400 billion-plus parameter model of the Llama 3 family since Meta gave word that it was training one in April, and today's announcement isn't just about the biggest member of the Llama 3 family: There's an entirely new iteration of improved Llama models with the designation "Llama 3.1." That includes upgraded versions of its smaller 8B and 70B models, which now feature multilingual support and an extended context length of 128,000 tokens (the "context length" is roughly the working memory capacity of the model, and "tokens" are chunks of data used by LLMs to process information).

Meta says that 405B is useful for long-form text summarization, multilingual conversational agents, and coding assistants and for creating synthetic data used to train future AI language models. Notably, that last use-case—allowing developers to use outputs from Llama models to improve other AI models—is now officially supported by Meta's Llama 3.1 license for the first time.

Abusing the term “open source”

Llama 3.1 405B is an open-weights model, which means anyone can download the trained neural network files and run them or fine-tune them. That directly challenges a business model where companies like OpenAI keep the weights to themselves and instead monetize the model through subscription wrappers like ChatGPT or charge for access by the token through an API.

Fighting the "closed" AI model is a big deal to Mark Zuckerberg, who simultaneously released a 2,300-word manifesto today on why the company believes in open releases of AI models, titled, "Open Source AI Is the Path Forward." More on the terminology in a minute. But briefly, he writes about the need for customizable AI models that offer user control and encourage better data security, higher cost-efficiency, and better future-proofing, as opposed to vendor-locked solutions.

All that sounds reasonable, but disrupting your competitors using a model subsidized by a social media war chest is also an efficient way to play spoiler in a market where you might not always win with the most cutting-edge tech. Open releases of AI models benefit Meta, Zuckerberg says, because he doesn't want to get locked into a system where companies like his have to pay a toll to access AI capabilities, drawing comparisons to "taxes" Apple levies on developers through its App Store.

So, about that "open source" term. As we first wrote in an update to our Llama 2 launch article a year ago, "open source" has a very particular meaning that has traditionally been defined by the Open Source Initiative. The AI industry has not yet settled on terminology for AI model releases that ship either code or weights with restrictions (such as Llama 3.1) or that ship without providing training data. We've been calling these releases "open weights" instead.

Unfortunately for terminology sticklers, Zuckerberg has now baked the erroneous "open source" label into the title of his potentially historic aforementioned essay on open AI releases, so fighting for the correct term in AI may be a losing battle. Still, his usage annoys people like independent AI researcher Simon Willison, who likes Zuckerberg's essay otherwise.

"I see Zuck's prominent misuse of 'open source' as a small-scale act of cultural vandalism," Willison told Ars Technica. "Open source should have an agreed meaning. Abusing the term weakens that meaning which makes the term less generally useful, because if someone says 'it's open source,' that no longer tells me anything useful. I have to then dig in and figure out what they're actually talking about."

The Llama 3.1 models are available for download through Meta's own website and on Hugging Face . They both require providing contact information and agreeing to a license and an acceptable use policy , which means that Meta can technically legally pull the rug out from under your use of Llama 3.1 or its outputs at any time.

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Can we live on worms alone? Probably not, find scientists

Feedback digs into a study on whether earthworms might provide the nutritional answer in the case of a global famine, and discovers a can of worms

By Marc Abrahams

31 July 2024

Diet of worms?

The phrase “diet of worms” intrigues people (if it intrigues them at all) in various ways. For historians, it can trigger arguments about a political convocation that happened in the city of Worms, in Germany in the year 1521. For nutritionists, the phrase can describe the work of scientists who are considering whether all of today’s 8 billion or so humans could, if need be, subsist on a diet of mainly earthworms.

Henry Miller, James Mulhall, Lou Aino Pfau, Rachel Palm and David Denkenberger, whom Feedback regards as the all-star team of the nutritional-diet-of-worms community, recently feasted on a mass of data. Postprandially, intellectually speaking, they produced a study called “ Can foraging for earthworms significantly reduce global famine in a catastrophe? ” It appears in the journal Biomass .

The five analysed four techniques for efficiently fishing, so to speak, for earthworms: “digging and sorting, vermifuge application, worm grunting, and electroshocking”.

They asked the “can” (of worms) question: Can the worms gathered by these methods feed all of us humans, given the constraints of “scalability, climate-related barriers to foraging, and pre-consumption processing requirements”? Their answer, in a word: no.

Their answer in 48 words: “The authors are not aware of any studies of the human health impacts of consuming a diet rich in foraged earthworms. However, in the authors’ opinion, there is reasonable evidence that such a diet could be harmful and so should not be recommended unless starvation is the alternative.”

Diets of worms

Miller, Mulhall, Pfau, Palm and Denkenberger are but the most recent front-runners in a long parade of scientists drawn to investigate diets of worms.

Many others have focused on the diets of the worms themselves.

Charles Darwin attained some measure of his fame for the 1881 book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms . Nearly a century later, Kristian Fauchald and Peter Jumars’s “ The diet of worms: A study of polychaete feeding guilds ” occupied 92 pages of the Oceanography and Marine Biology Annual Review .

Fauchald and Jumars included a conversation-stopper of a sentence that is worth memorising and spouting if you want to worm your way into the spotlight at a party: “Alciopids are holoplanktonic animals with muscular, eversible pharynges.”

Other scientists studied what can happen when one eats worms, especially if one isn’t a human.

In 2002, Mary Silcox and Mark Teaford examined the teeth of some habitual worm-eaters. They wrote up their observations, for the Journal of Mammalogy , under the title “ The diet of worms: An analysis of mole dental microwear “.

“We compared microwear from shearing facets of lower molars from Parascalops breweri (the hairy-tailed mole) and Scapanus orarius (the coast mole) with that from other small mammal species including a tenrec, a hedgehog, 3 primates, and 2 bats.”

Some of the mole tooth wear patterns, they write, can be “plausibly explained by the interaction between teeth and soil from the inside and outside of earthworms”.

Silcox and Teaford’s mole teeth research would take on new significance if and when – despite the warning given by Miller et al. – the peoples of Earth opt for a mostly earthworms dietary regimen.

The tall and short of it

News about height requirements for certain courses at Vietnam National University’s school of management and business (HSB) has Feedback wondering.

Deutsche Welle reported on 2 July that “female students must be at least 1.58 meters tall and male students at least 1.65 meters to be considered for admission this year”. The reasoning here: “the school aims to train future leaders and excellent managers” and “height is a decisive factor, especially when it comes to leadership and self-confidence”.

That news report says that after public outcry, “HSB adjusted its admission criteria” so that “the rule now applies only to one course, Management and Security”.

What schools or other institutions in the science, medical or tech world have managed to secure strict height prohibitions for students or employees? If you know of one, please send documentation to Feedback with the subject line “Big/Small Careers”. Some job requirements sensibly specify that applicants be physically able to use some particular job-related equipment. Don’t send those. Feedback craves examples in which numbers, not needs, rule the day.

Toilet humour

Inspired by Feedback’s collection of abandoned organisational slogans, Ken Taylor takes note of a slogan about things that were abandoned.

“I live in a very rural part of [the] UK – Cumbria. There are lots of isolated properties that are not linked to the sewerage network, so rely on septic tanks. These have to be emptied from time to time. I saw one such tanker going about its business. The slogan on the side said ‘Yesterday’s meals on wheels’. Nothing more to add…”

Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is  improbable.com .

Got a story for Feedback?

You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected] . Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website .

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