it will be interesting to see what facebook turns into if/when they get a new ceo who is business success focused, like tim cook and satya nadella, who are just corporate mercenaries trying to run the most efficient business possible, which is not what the founders of those businesses did. then there’s the question of, will zuckerburg ever even get fb now meta to that point or will he insist on maintaining control and using the company to fund his pet projects to the detriment of the bottom line? zuck spends his time, pie in the sky, while cook and nads eat sleep and breath spreadsheets! riveting!
Meta
31–40 of 210 posts
Re: Meta
#32It's really hard to use much of what Zuck says for reasonable analysis. Examples:
> I care about this existing, not just virtual and augmented reality existing, but it getting built out in a way that really advances the state of human connection...
> I think we’ll have hopefully an opportunity to shape the development of the next platform in order to make it more amenable to these ways that I think people will naturally want to interact.
I mean, how can you read stuff like this and not laugh?
Re: Meta
#33I see it as closer to the Amazon pivot from selling physical goods to selling digital goods (using digital as an umbrella encompassing AWS, Kindle, Prime (which essentially digitizes fulfillment and delivery), etc.). FB sold users to advertisers. Very Web 2.0. Well the potential decentralization of Web3 potentially destroys that business model and the Meta strategy seems like it reflects this potential change in the…
The Amazon comparison is apt, but I think Apple shifting revenue from hardware to services is a better one.
Apple was able to catch the paradigm shift of us starting to use our phones for everything, and make loads of money by offering services to a captive audience and sharecropping opportunities to app developers.
Facebook tried to become a platform during the last paradigm shift and failed. Selling users to advertisers has been lucrative but clearly isn't as sticky as the platform model (which is why they have to keep buying up their competitors). So they're trying to push another shift to VR and be the platform for that.
Re: Meta
#34This makes me think of Comcast rebranding to Xfinity (USA); though I didn't really grasp what the intended reach of the rebranding to Meta will be from the last post [1]. It seems like it's for the umbrella entity, no product renames. But it still seems like a play to distance their image from Facebook, only to be referenced in court. And if it's anything like the Comcast rebrand, it's like, everyone still knows who…
Remember that the Facebook renaming was for a very good purpose. It became clear as the company aged and grew that the initial name choice was quite poor, unfortunately in a lot of areas around the globe that name has a very negative association that wasn't obvious to Mark when he chose the name. The problem is that the word Facebook just happens to have a historical association with companies that don't respect your privacy - thankfully changing the name to Meta will let this company stand on its own merit. It's so Meta.
(Also, /s)
Re: Meta
#35Has a huge company ever rebranded themselves like this to a dream that they're so far away from delivering on? The Metaverse isn't an unfamiliar or abstract thing, it's well represented in movies and TV, and it's a pretty dramatic territory to claim: full sensory immersion in an infinite, interactive world. No one has gotten even a fraction of those things "right" and a social media company is gonna bet the farm on it because they bought a company that made VR goggles?
Re: Meta
#36Overall this new focus suggests to me that Facebook (Meta) sees limited potential future growth of their social media properties as such, and needs to look to new markets to sustain future growth.
However, it is very rare for companies -- especially large, established ones -- to succeed in pivoting themselves to deal with new market realities and ways of doing business. The entrenched interests and culture inside these organizations tend to resist significant change. There's an irony that the bigger the company, the less power a CEO actually has.
Time will tell if they succeed.
Re: Meta
#37This makes me think of Comcast rebranding to Xfinity (USA); though I didn't really grasp what the intended reach of the rebranding to Meta will be from the last post [1]. It seems like it's for the umbrella entity, no product renames. But it still seems like a play to distance their image from Facebook, only to be referenced in court. And if it's anything like the Comcast rebrand, it's like, everyone still knows who…
>it's like, everyone still knows who you are
"Yes, we know who you are."[0]
Re: Meta
#38Nice article. It's amazing how much bike-shedding there is here around the name and logo, and how little capacity most have for what these changes actually mean. Meta is going full in on the metaverse... so that's going to be hitting some critical mass fairly soon (less than a decade). And that's nuts. We should take this time to enjoy living before that moment. Who knows what changes it will bring, but surely enough…
> Meta is going full in on the metaverse... so that's going to be hitting some critical mass fairly soon (less than a decade).
That's a stretch. Tech history is littered with big companies who went hard on a technology only for their attempt to flop. See: Newton, Virtual Boy, Windows Phone, and most recently Google Stadia. There's also little reason to think that CEO Mark Zuckerberg of 2021 is as in-touch with the what the public wants and tech trends as college student Mark Zuckerberg was in 2004.
Edit: Another way to look at is: Has Facebook ever launched a product as successful as their primary business?
They've acquired some wildly successful properties (I'm thinking Instagram & WhatsApp) - but their in-house product efforts outside of Facebook itself have either flopped or been marginal at best - Facebook Phone, Facebook Portal. Oculus might be the exception - for now - but there's healthy competition in the VR headset space and the market isn't yet big enough for a "metaverse" to be widely accessible like the Facebook website was in 2004.
Re: Meta
#39>The fact that Facebook is uniquely held responsible for the societal problems engendered by the Internet does, I suspect, stem from the fact that Zuckerberg is an obvious target. How many people concerned about anti-vax rhetoric, for example, can even name the person in charge of YouTube, a far more potent vector? This article makes a very cogent point: Zuckerberg has too much baggage with the general public and Met…
Sorry but YouTube is not a far more potent vector. Facebook and Zuckerberg were fairly blamed because they actively developed features that amplified misinformation, and refused to take any action to curb their damage.
YouTube has been an extremely potent vector for antivax rhetoric. They've banned antivax content, but we'll see how that holds up.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/youtube-an... (2021)
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/youtub... (2019)
Re: Meta
#40Personally, I'm less bullish on FB/Meta now. Half of me believes if someone can turn it around it would be Zuck, and the other half believes that FB's culture has optimized the wrong the thing for the past 5 years. Consider this, and call me out if I'm wrong, for the past 5 years we were led to believe by FB/YouTube that algorithmically generated could only have negative consequences as it moved people to more and mo…
> The only way FB could grow was by pushing content that got people riled up.
Not sure if I've ever believe it was the only way for them to grow. I hate Facebook (product) for what it has become but it is an excellent tool for its original use, which is keeping in touch with friends/family/communities.