Multi-million dollar investments in the Metaverse hit Zuckerberg’s company hard Sales have fallen by 4%, compared to the 5% forecast by analysts The fall of Meta adds to the poor results of other technology giants such as Amazon and Alphabet, a company that owns Google and FacebookMeta results have plunged in the third quarter. The worst omens have come true for the technology company – which, in addition to Facebook, also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus. In July and September, its net profit has fallen by 52% compared to a year earlier, to 4,395 million dollars (4,360 million euros). Sales have fallen by 4%, compared to the 5% forecast by analysts. If we look at the first nine months of the year, the American giant of social networks has announced net profits of 18,547 million dollars, which represents a drop of 36% compared to the same period of the previous year. Analysts forecast Between January and September Meta entered 84,444 million dollars, practically the same turnover as in the equivalent period of 2021, while its operating expenses have shot up 19%, which explains the drop in profits. As soon as these results were known, the giant has collapsed in the stock market by 12%, although as the session progressed, the fall has moderated to 5%. Behind this drop are the multi-million dollar investments in the Metaverse, which are hitting Zuckerberg’s company hard. He changes the name of Facebook to Meta and Zuckerberg said that he was going to enter fully into the digital world. Since then, Meta has invested billions of dollars and restructured itself around this emerging technology. A decision that has been made just when the world economy has slowed down and inflation has skyrocketed In July, the Silicon Valley company recorded its first drop in sales. Its shares have plunged more than 60 percent this year. In fact, Meta reported that its Reality Labs division, responsible for its virtual and augmented reality keys to the Metaverse, had lost $3.7 billion compared to $2.6 billion a year earlier. But it is also that Meta has already recognized that the losses of this division will grow even more next year. More poor results from another giantAlphabet, the company that owns Google and YouTube, has suffered an unexpected commercial slowdown in the third quarter in its main business , the search. Revenue in the third quarter in the United States, where it is the largest marketer of digital advertising, only increased 6%, below the 9% that analysts expected. That’s the slowest growth rate since 2013, barring a brief contraction at the start of the pandemic. Microsoft has also warned the market of slowing growth in cloud computing. Like the search industry, the cloud services industry was considered more resilient to economic downturns than other parts of the digital world. This Wednesday the Nasdaq, which brings together the main technology companies, opened down 1.69% weighed down by the falls of Microsoft and Alphabet. “It bodes badly for digital advertising in general”, Evelyn Mitchell has assessed in the Financial Times Insider Intelligence analyst. In the case of Alphabet’s search division, Google Search revenue grew 4.2%, well below forecasts of 8%, and YouTube suffered a 2% drop when analysts expected a 8%. In a meeting with investors, the chief executive of Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, has said that they expected “tough times” in the advertising market. Its financial director, Ruth Porat, attributes the slowdown to the fact that this third quarter is being compared to the third quarter of 2021 when the company benefited from the increase in digital advertising due to the pandemic. The poor results of these digital giants reflect a slowdown in digital advertising in the world’s largest economy due to inflation and poor economic prospects. The advertising budget is often the first to suffer when companies try to contain their costs. Spotify, the audio streaming service with the largest market share in the US, reported Tuesday that the economic situation has hit its sales ads in the third quarter, despite strong subscription growth. Last week, shares of another tech company, Snapchat, lost a third of their value when it reported that its advertisers were still cutting their advertising budgets due to inflation.