2022 has been a difficult year for social media companies.

Facebook spent billions of dollars trying to make the metaverse happen. Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and plunged the company into chaos, sending advertisers and some power users fleeing. Across Silicon Valley, tens of thousands of workers have been laid off as economic woes deflated the high-tech pandemic.

It’s not what many companies expected back in January when they were trying to start over.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has changed his company name to Meta to signal a big new gamble in the metaverse, an immersive virtual world that he believes is the future of the internet.

Twitter had a new CEO, after co-founder Jack Dorsey handed over the reins to chief technology officer Parag Agrawal…