Mumbai: In a conference call with analysts to discuss the third quarter 2022 results, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that in terms of the business, total revenue grew slightly this quarter on a constant currency basis. "We’re still behind where I think we should be, but we believe that we will return to healthier revenue growth trends next year. That said, it’s not clear that the economy has stabilised yet, so we’re planning our budget somewhat more conservatively."

He noted that the company in the quarter had launched JioMart on WhatsApp in India. "It's our first end-to-end shopping experience that shows the potential for chat-based commerce through messaging." He said that beyond Reels, messaging is another major monetisation opportunity. "Billions of people and millions of businesses use WhatsApp and Messenger every day, and we're confident we can connect them in ways that create valuable experiences."

For the record, Meta's share price fell by 20 per cent in after-hours trading after it reported its fourth straight quarterly decline in profit. Analysts want Meta to cut costs. Some analysts describe Meta's investments as being confusing and confounding.

Zuckerberg also said that Meta's product trends look better than what the commentary that he has seen suggests.

"Our community continued to grow this quarter. We now reach more than 3.7 billion people monthly across our family of apps. And while we continue to navigate some challenging dynamics—a volatile macroeconomy, increasing competition, ad signal loss, and growing costs from our long-term investments—Iq have to say that our product trends look better from what I see than some of the commentary I’ve seen suggests."

He said that three of the areas that Meta is very focused on are the AI discovery engine, the ads and business messaging platforms, and the future vision for the metaverse. "I believe the tougher prioritisation, discipline, and efficiency that we're driving across the organisation will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company."

Reels, which is its short-form video platform, continues to grow quickly across apps—both in production and consumption. "There are now more than 140 billion reels played across Facebook and Instagram each day. That's a 50 per cent increase from six months ago. Reels are incremental to time spent on our apps. The trends look good here, and we believe that we're gaining time spent on competitors like TikTok."

While analysts are unsure about whether the big bets on areas like the Metaverse will pay off, Zuckerberg expressed confidence in the work being done in the Metaverse space. "We just had our Connect conference and announced Quest Pro, which we just started shipping. It’s our new high-end VR headset that delivers high-resolution mixed reality so you can blend virtual objects into the physical environment around you. It's pretty amazing when you see it, and it's going to enable all kinds of new experiences in socializing, gaming, fitness, and work. I'm really looking forward to seeing what people build with this new capability.

Working in the metaverse is a big theme for Quest Pro. There are 200 million people who get new PCs every year, mostly for work. Our goal for the Quest Pro line over the next several years is to enable more and more of these people to get their work done in virtual and mixed reality, eventually even better than they could on PCs."

He dwelt on the importance of partnerships. "To deliver a great work and productivity experience, I'm excited about the partnerships we announced with Microsoft bringing their suite of productivity and enterprise management services to Quest, Adobe and Autodesk bringing their creative tools, Zoom bringing their communication platform, Accenture building solutions for enterprises, and more.

"There's still a long road ahead to build the next computing platform, but we are clearly doing leading work here. This is a massive undertaking, and it’s often going to take a few versions of each product before they become mainstream. But I think our work is going to be of historic importance and create the foundation for an entirely new way that we will interact with each other and blend technology into our lives, as well as a foundation for the long term of our business."