When it comes to social media, Facebook is the biggest name out there. What started as a social networking service for Harvard University students is now the largest social media company in the world with over 2.8 billion users across its various platforms. In October 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta Platforms to emphasize its aim of building the ‘metaverse’ – a virtual world where people can socialise and connect with one another. To reflect its new focus, Meta reorganised its business into two new reportable segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs. Meta business segments. Chart: moomoo The Family of Apps segment comprises Meta’s social and messaging platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. This segment generates revenue through the sale of adver

Among the FAANGM stocks, Google has always been my favourite. Since discovering its ground-breaking search engine in 1998 in the early days of Internet, to jumping onto Gmail when it first launched with 1GB of free space (Hotmail only offered 2MB back then), Google has pretty much been a part of my everyday life. Today, I still search on Google, use Gmail, navigate on Google Maps, and surf YouTube on an almost daily basis. Unlike social media, I would find it hard or extremely inconvenient to live without Google and its services. Since its listing in August 2004 to end-2021, Google’s stock price has returned an amazing 5,670%. This means every $10,000 invested would have grown into $577,000. Google has clearly been a phenomenally successful company over the last 20 odd years. But,

First published in Straits Times on 31 October 2021 They need to know the emphasis firms place on environmental, social and governance factors Although Covid-19 has proven to be the most wide-reaching public health crisis that has severely damaged the world economy, it has nonetheless highlighted a few important considerations that businesses need to bear in mind if they are to successfully compete in a post-virus world. First, companies that integrated sustainability and transparency strategically into their business operations prior to Covid-19 are more likely to display greater agility when responding to unexpected events. Second, health, safety and well-being are now central to the resiliency and sustainability discussion in a way that has never occurred before. Third, the importance o