don't take the adjustment in share price lead you to believe that something is fundamentally out of order with fb's businesses. they're still well positioned and are an essential service for many people worldwide. they seem to have been able to monetize fairly well, too. where do you get the idea that they are going to 'die?'
Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
81–90 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#82Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Like Oracle or IBM (although IBM is not completely dead). Given the JS ecosystem cycle, React will be replaced by something better much sooner.
There's nothing about Facebook that anyone needs, that no one else provides. It could go as quickly as AOL.
It's really just that network effect is a feature, especially on a communication platform.
Personally, somewhere on my project backlog is a plan to set up a personal Matrix server for this exact reason, as most of the public ones I've found stop just short of actually supporting bridging for any Meta platforms yet.
(And even if they did, E2E bridging is still WIP at the spec level anyway if memory serves, which would mean still having to roll my own for the time being... Because naturally, if I'm concerned enough about my dependence on other people's cloud services, or their harvesting of my data, to consider going to lengths like these, then I'm obviously not just going to just wantonly funnel a collection of DMs spanning about half my lifetime through a third party's servers.)
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable.
Facebook hasn't been fashionable for over 10 years. Yet here we are.
Well, I'd say you're correct, but my point is they are not "unfashionable", as in "ewww! you use Facebook!?" in a shrill tone. All it will take is the GOP to politicize being on FB, and it's over. Divide and destroy.
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#84I would usually argue that there is no way the Facebook/Meta would die (it almost certainly wont) and so the question is redundant. However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control and the board/shareholders cannot eject him. Most (every?) other public company would go through multiple leadership changes over their lifetime as shareholders exert control. Zuckerberg seems t…
Fascinating. Looking forward to when Zuck hits his mid 40s and ends up self-immolating Meta in the most glorious mid-life crisis the world has ever seen. [Source: I'm in my 40s and could easily imagine cratering a trillion dollar company I created in a quixotic quest to make the world a better place.]
Holy cow, now I'm waiting for that too!
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Exactly, there's no way Meta will suddenly disappear and go poof, barring some kind of extreme government action or bizarre corpora-cidal action by its controlling shareholder Mark Zuckerberg.
Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable.
> Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable.
Nothing popular becomes unfashionable that quickly.
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
2.9 billion users https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
I don’t know where Statista gets their numbers but Meta reported their active users this week at 1.92B. It was a drop from 1.93B which is partially why their stock tanked.
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A slow death on the order of 10-20 years may happen A sibling comment even said, > Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Like Oracle or IBM (although IBM is not completely dead). I think death could happen a lot sooner. Rapidly, even. Meta is not B2B, but B2C. They won't have ten year contracts, legacy workloads that they can raise costs on, or new businesses to schmooze over a game of golfi…
Neither MySpace nor Digg were anywhere near the scale of Meta. At it’s peak MySpace was one or two orders of magnitude smaller than Meta is today. Facebook may wither and die but they also have Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. And for what it’s worth there is almost nothing more I’d like to see than Meta vanishing. I hope you’re right.
In 2006, MySpace was the most visited website in the United States. Wikipedia cites a couple of sources, and I do recall this being widely reported at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
Granted, the web was a much smaller place then, in terms of both users and revenue. But still, relative to its time, it was huge.
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Exactly, there's no way Meta will suddenly disappear and go poof, barring some kind of extreme government action or bizarre corpora-cidal action by its controlling shareholder Mark Zuckerberg.
I'm sure that's what MySpace investors thought.
Not quite comparable. During MySpace's peak, it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of NewsCorp. Reportedly its stumbles were due (at least in part) to internal disagreement over strategic direction between MySpace and their parent company. Sort of like if Instagram imploded due to disagreement with Meta, rather than the entirety of Meta dying.
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither MySpace nor Digg were anywhere near the scale of Meta. At it’s peak MySpace was one or two orders of magnitude smaller than Meta is today. Facebook may wither and die but they also have Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. And for what it’s worth there is almost nothing more I’d like to see than Meta vanishing. I hope you’re right.
> At it’s peak MySpace was one or two orders of magnitude smaller than Meta is today. While this may be true, what % of global internet DAUs did each of them house? I'm not sure if this relevant or not, but it seems the internet was just a much smaller place back then.
I don't know. Is it really that relevant? It's just fundamentally pretty hard to quickly shed 1.92 billion users. Quick and dirty math there are around 3 billion internet users in the world, excluding China. Meta platforms have 1.92B of those people. The scale and penetration is hard to fathom.
Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A slow death on the order of 10-20 years may happen A sibling comment even said, > Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Like Oracle or IBM (although IBM is not completely dead). I think death could happen a lot sooner. Rapidly, even. Meta is not B2B, but B2C. They won't have ten year contracts, legacy workloads that they can raise costs on, or new businesses to schmooze over a game of golfi…
Meta technically is mostly B2B, the users are the product. There are probably businesses that have signed ad spend deals with Meta that they can float on. And I'm sure there's ways Meta can/is juicing their ad auction numbers since they control the both ends of it without a lot of transparency.
Aren’t the contracts based on click through rates or impressions? If the users go, I doubt companies signed contracts to pay the same for less visibility.