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 have 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 reside viewers. Zuck had been training UFC-style, making him a tad extra threatening than his earlier iteration as a hoodied Harvard loser. Musk, alternatively, stated he would shed some kilos and get a trainer. The combat promised to be one of the memorable occasions in internet historical past.
After all, 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. Consequently, we could by no means know which middle-aged billionaire is healthier at hand at hand fight. That stated, when you have been to dimension them up by the 12 months they’ve had, it could be laborious 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 12 months. 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 trying to remodel it right into a so-called “all the pieces app,” floundered from the get-go. Musk frequently claimed that X can be actually, actually superior simply as quickly as the required modifications have been made. After all, a complete lot of modifications 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 similar time, Musk has additionally been struggling on a number of, different fronts. Along with struggling an increasing amount of flak and status decline for his, let’s assume, free-spirited opinions, Musk’s automobile firm, Tesla, is beneath 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 one actually thought have been potential. Working example, a report revealed Monday confirmed that Meta’s inventory is on observe to have its finest 12 months ever. CNBC reviews that the corporate’s inventory rose a whopping 178 p.c over the previous twelve months. Which means it’s having a greater 12 months than 2013, when its inventory rose 105 p.c following its IPO. After all, it bears consideration that Zuck managed to achieve that stage of company buoyancy by firing a whole lot of people. Certainly, in a 12 months stuffed with Silicon Valley layoffs, Meta’s cost-cutting technique stood out as particularly bloodthirsty.
At any price, Zuck’s fundamental 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 sequence of public scandals (the Facebook Papers, anyone?), Zuck insisted on pivoting his firm away from its conventional enterprise and in the direction of a quixotic effort to build “the metaverse.” The Meta CEO was a steadfast believer in the concept that his firm might singlehandedly assist create an expanded marketplace for digital actuality companies, thus ushering within the subsequent epoch of the web. As a substitute, his technique largely led the corporate to lose gargantuan amounts of money, credibility, and inventory worth.
This 12 months has supplied Meta a possibility to pivot as soon as once more, avoid wasting face, and look actually good compared to competitor Musk’s flailing dumpster hearth of a 12 months. Meta’s launch of Threads was, if not precisely a blockbuster success, at the very least a modest one compared to X.
Whereas Zuck is the clear winner of 2023, what subsequent 12 months holds for each tech oligarchs is anyone’s guess. Zuck is seemingly planning for the long run by constructing a doomsday bunker and Musk appears to have designs on his own university and, doubtlessly, 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 12 months will deliver.
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