This summer, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk shocked the Internet by claiming they would fight each other in a “cage match” style fight. Rival tech executives were fighting over their platform competition in the microblogging space and their proposed solution to this rivalry was to beat each other up in front of a live audience. Zuck had been training UFC style, making him a little more threatening than the previous version of him as a hooded loser from Harvard. Musk, on the other hand, said he will lose a few pounds and get a trainer. The fight promised to be one of the most memorable events in the history of the web.
Of course, this long-awaited event never materialized. Musk allegedly continued to dodge Zuck in plans for the fight, leading Zuck to call off the whole thing. As a result, we may never know which middle-aged billionaire is better at hand-to-hand combat. That said, if you were to evaluate them on the year they’ve had, it would be difficult to argue that there hasn’t been a clear winner. In fact, between the two of them, Zuck has obviously been the undisputed champion of 2023.
The reasons for this should be obvious. Musk had a terrible year. Most notably, the billionaire embarked on a buffoonish adventure. to remake Twitter, his ill-advised acquisition of it. This effort, which involved renaming the platform “X” and trying to transform it into a so-called “everything, the application”, failed from the first moment. Musk continually claimed that X would be really, really awesome as soon as changes were needed. Of course, many changes later, things are still very unimpressive. The platform, which seems close to death, has caused Musk nothing but pain over the past twelve months.
At the same time, Musk has also been fighting on many other fronts. In addition to suffering an increasing amount of criticism and the reputation of his, shall we say, free-spirited opinions, Musk’s car company, Tesla, is under attack by a group of angry Swedish Unions. It appears the richest man in the world just can’t catch a break.
By comparison, Zuck has managed to stay relatively scandal-free throughout 2023 while also achieving some victories that no one really thought were possible. Case in point, a report released Monday showed that Meta stock is on track to have its best year ever. CNBC reports that the company’s shares are up a whopping 178 percent in the last twelve months. That means it’s having a better year than 2013, when its shares rose 105 percent after its IPO. Of course, Zuck managed to gain that level of corporate dynamism by laying off a lot of people. In fact, in a year filled with layoffs in Silicon Valley, Meta’s cost-cutting strategy stood out as particularly cutthroat.
In any case, Zuck’s main achievement has been breaking Meta out of his previous death spiral. Lest you forget, the company spent most of 2022 bleeding money and becoming an increasingly bigger laughing stock because, in response to a series of serious public scandals (Facebook Papers, anyone?), Zuck insisted in moving his company away from its traditional business strategy and toward a quixotic effort to build “the metaverse.” Meta’s CEO firmly believed in the idea that his company could single-handedly help create an expanded market for virtual reality services. . Thus marking the beginning of the next era of the Internet. Instead, his strategy mainly led to the company losing. gigantic amounts of money, credibility and share value.
This year has given Meta a chance to pivot once again, save face, and look really good compared to hectic competitor Musk’s year-old Dumpster Fire. Meta’s release of Threads was, if not exactly a blockbuster, at least modest by comparison. to X.
While Zuck is the clear winner of 2023, what next year will bring for both tech oligarchs is anyone’s guess. Zuck is apparently planning for the future by building a doomsday bunker and Musk appears to have designs on his own university and potentially a moon base. As Zuck’s own change of fortune demonstrates, the future is unwritten and no one knows what the new year will bring.