By Hemaja Burud
Some bettor will come out on top in the wager that Elon completes the sale of Twitter, while others will lose.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company's creator and CEO, tried to keep things positive by saying
"Look on the bright side of these doomsday spreadsheets!" but the market wasn't buying it.
Investors, instead of seeing the glass as half full, noted the flat growth, lower sales, and profits
caused by Zuckerberg's single-minded pursuit of the metaverse, a potential future business.
Meta dropped a fifth of its value shortly after the call. The value of Meta was close to $1 trillion less than a year ago.
In the early years of Facebook, Sean Parker, the company's president at the time, taught Mark Zuckerberg the ropes of Silicon Valley.
Parker believed he had previously been cheated out of his position—and the associated wealth—at a business he had created, Plaxo.
At Facebook, Zuckerberg established a corporate structure under Parker's guidance
hat made sure no one, not even the board of directors, could override or remove him.