This article is part of a series tracking the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on major businesses and sectors. For other articles and earlier versions, go here.
That has led to increasing profit and revenue throughout the pandemic, as well as higher stock prices. So far this year, Facebook shares are outperforming those of high-tech brethren Apple Inc. AAPL and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, which are up 1.5% and up 3% so far this year through Friday’s close, respectively.
Instagram Reels, a TikTok-like feature to record and edit 15- to 30-second videos with effects, was announced in August. In October, Quest 2, Facebook’s virtual-reality headset for gaming and entertainment, was launched for the holidays at about $300. “If you look at the history of computing, every 15 years or so a new major platform emerges that integrates technology more naturally and ubiquitously into our lives — starting with mainframes, then PCs, then browser-based computing, and then mobile,” Zuckerberg said in a conference call with analysts. “I believe that the next logical step here is an immersive computing platform that just delivers this magical sense of presence — that you’re really there with another person or in another place.
Fear of the next Cambridge Analytica Facebook’s advertising business as well as its diversification strategy comes fraught with some speed bumps. The biggest could be an update to Apple’s operating system that will allow users to more easily block Facebook and other advertisers from tracking their activity across other apps and internet sites, which has led to an open battle between the tech titans.
Whether all the talk and hand-wringing leads to legislation is the next logical step. Tech legal expert Jenny Lee said members from both sides of Congress demonstrated in Thursday’s hearing that they are “galvanized and ready to proceed with serious legislation.”On the European front, a German court in Düsseldorf has asked the European Court of Justice to determine whether Facebook was in breach of the EU’s stringent data protection rules, called the General Data Protection Regulation.