This summer time, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk blew the web’s thoughts by claiming they might combat one another in a “cage match”-style brawl. The rival tech execs had been feuding over their platforms’ competition in the microblogging space and their proposed answer to this rivalry was to beat the crap out of one another in entrance of a stay viewers. Zuck had been training UFC-style, making him a tad extra threatening than his earlier iteration as a hoodied Harvard loser. Musk, alternatively, mentioned he would shed some kilos and get a trainer. The combat promised to be one of the memorable occasions in internet historical past.
In fact, this much anticipated event never materialized. Musk allegedly stored dodging Zuck on plans for the combat, which led Zuck to name the entire thing off. Because of this, we might by no means know which middle-aged billionaire is best at hand handy fight. That mentioned, if you happen to had been to dimension them up by the yr they’ve had, it could be exhausting to argue that there hasn’t been a transparent victor. Certainly, between the 2 of them, Zuck is clearly the undisputed champ of 2023.
The explanations for this needs to be apparent. Musk had a horrible yr. Most notably, the billionaire launched into a buffoonish journey to remake Twitter, his ill-advised acquisition. This effort, which concerned renaming the platform “X” and making an attempt to remodel it right into a so-called “every thing app,” floundered from the get-go. Musk regularly claimed that X can be actually, actually superior simply as quickly as the mandatory adjustments had been made. In fact, an entire lot of adjustments later, issues are nonetheless very un-awesome. The platform, which seems near death, has triggered Musk nothing however grief during the last twelve months.
On the identical time, Musk has additionally been struggling on a number of, different fronts. Along with struggling an increasing amount of flak and fame decline for his, shall we embrace, free-spirited opinions, Musk’s automotive firm, Tesla, is underneath assault by a cadre of pissed off Swedish labor unions. It seems the world’s richest man simply can’t catch a break.
By comparability, Zuck has managed to remain comparatively scandal free all through 2023 whereas additionally eeking out some victories that no person actually thought had been potential. Working example, a report printed Monday confirmed that Meta’s inventory is on observe to have its greatest yr ever. CNBC studies that the corporate’s inventory rose a whopping 178 p.c over the previous twelve months. Which means it’s having a greater yr than 2013, when its inventory rose 105 p.c following its IPO. In fact, it bears consideration that Zuck managed to realize that stage of company buoyancy by firing a whole lot of people. Certainly, in a yr stuffed with Silicon Valley layoffs, Meta’s cost-cutting technique stood out as particularly bloodthirsty.
At any charge, Zuck’s principal accomplishment has been to drag Meta out of its earlier death spiral. Lest you’ve forgotten, the corporate spent most of 2022 hemorrhaging cash and turning into an ever larger laughingstock as a result of, in response to a collection of public scandals (the Facebook Papers, anyone?), Zuck insisted on pivoting his firm away from its conventional enterprise and in direction of a quixotic effort to build “the metaverse.” The Meta CEO was a steadfast believer in the concept his firm may singlehandedly assist create an expanded marketplace for digital actuality companies, thus ushering within the subsequent epoch of the web. As a substitute, his technique principally led the corporate to lose gargantuan amounts of money, credibility, and inventory worth.
This yr has supplied Meta a chance to pivot as soon as once more, avoid wasting face, and look actually good compared to competitor Musk’s flailing dumpster fireplace of a yr. Meta’s launch of Threads was, if not precisely a blockbuster success, not less than a modest one compared to X.
Whereas Zuck is the clear winner of 2023, what subsequent yr holds for each tech oligarchs is anyone’s guess. Zuck is outwardly planning for the long run by constructing a doomsday bunker and Musk appears to have designs on his own university and, probably, a moon base. As Zuck’s personal reversal of fortune proves, the long run is unwritten and nobody is aware of what the brand new yr will convey.
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