Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

johncoogan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 133 posts

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#41

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

salmonfamine wrote: post #31
krm01 wrote: post #9

As I was watching their 'keynote' I couldn't help but wonder about the many companies that took a similar approach and then died. Spending a ton of money on something doesn't make it automatically successful. [1] In fact, history has shown the opposite to be true. Take Facebook itself for example, it succeeded, not because it poured Billions into building its social network. Mark built something small, for a small ma…

Is this not, essentially, the innovator's dilemma? Facebook has to increase profits at a large scale now, and doubtlessly suffers from middle-management power jockeying, and so is unable to repeat the small market growth process that made them what they are today.

They could cut costs and just try to be good at being a better Facebook. I know that is heresy in the stock world.

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#42

Post by lapetitejort »

mrits wrote: post #17
littlestymaar wrote: post #3

Because Facebook is now a social network used mostly by people from 40 to 70. They aren't trendy anymore, and most of the Facebook-related press headlines in the past 5 years have been about privacy or advertisement scandals. They are in desperate need for some good PR if they want to restore their brand name.

You could replace Facebook with 'Windows' in your statement and it would be why everyone was sure MS was dead.

So what you're saying is that 2041 is The Year of Mastodon Social Network?

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#44

Post by cletus »

Facebook thinks about social networks in two dimensions:

1. Audience size (eg 2. Format (eg text, images, video, VR, AR).

You can go through the exercise of placing every social network on this grid and there are gaps. Implied in this is a progression in formats and we've certainly had that from text to images to video.

In this framework, the acquisition of Oculus makes more sense.

I personally question the premise that formats will evolve from into VR. VR seems to be viewed as a mere stepping stone to AR. I agree that AR seems more likely an outcome. I just don't see VR going mainstream in a way that FB seems to be betting on.

Disclaimer: Ex-Facebooker. Opinions are my own.

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#45

Post by 2th3m00n »

krm01 wrote: post #9

As I was watching their 'keynote' I couldn't help but wonder about the many companies that took a similar approach and then died. Spending a ton of money on something doesn't make it automatically successful. [1] In fact, history has shown the opposite to be true. Take Facebook itself for example, it succeeded, not because it poured Billions into building its social network. Mark built something small, for a small ma…

I agree with you for the most part, but what the companies you gave examples of lacked is a Zuck. None of them had someone who could execute as effectively as he could.

https://stratechery.com/2021/meta/

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#46

Post by salmonfamine »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #41
salmonfamine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not, essentially, the innovator's dilemma? Facebook has to increase profits at a large scale now, and doubtlessly suffers from middle-management power jockeying, and so is unable to repeat the small market growth process that made them what they are today.

They could cut costs and just try to be good at being a better Facebook. I know that is heresy in the stock world.

I think they effectively cannot. There would be a shareholder's revolt.

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#47

Post by SavantIdiot »

krm01 wrote: post #9

As I was watching their 'keynote' I couldn't help but wonder about the many companies that took a similar approach and then died. Spending a ton of money on something doesn't make it automatically successful. [1] In fact, history has shown the opposite to be true. Take Facebook itself for example, it succeeded, not because it poured Billions into building its social network. Mark built something small, for a small ma…

> Google, Apple, Airbnb, Stripe, none became the giants they are because they spent billions on a grand vision.

Google set out to catalog the entire internet on day one. If that's not a grand vision that they spent billions on, what is?

AirBNB set out to disrupt the entire vacation rental market.

Stripe set out to disrupt the entire POS payment market.

Apple is the only one who fits your narrative: they set out to make a hobby PC then Jobs wanted to ... oh right, disrupt the entire PC market with Mac, but that came 7 years later so OK.

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#48

Post by mempko »

krm01 wrote: post #9

As I was watching their 'keynote' I couldn't help but wonder about the many companies that took a similar approach and then died. Spending a ton of money on something doesn't make it automatically successful. [1] In fact, history has shown the opposite to be true. Take Facebook itself for example, it succeeded, not because it poured Billions into building its social network. Mark built something small, for a small ma…

That's because you are comparing Facebook to startups when you should be comparing Facebook to AT&T. AT&T spent billions on Bell Labs and gave us the transistor among other things like modern day switching networks. AT&T was a government sanctioned monopoly, and for that privileged they spent billions on research.

Keep in mind that billions were already spent on the technology behind the metaverse in research institutions and government labs. Think internet, computers, AI tech, VR tech, all had billions of investment from the public sector already.

What you are seeing with the metaverse is a privatization of the technology that already had substantial public investment.

And even your startups are just piggy backing off billions spent in research. Google itself was started by a government grant for example.

In other words when you look at spend at starups, you are just looking at the tip of an iceberg. Where under the water there was billions spent already by the public.

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#49

Post by larsiusprime »

enlyth wrote: post #8
littlestymaar wrote: post #3

Because Facebook is now a social network used mostly by people from 40 to 70. They aren't trendy anymore, and most of the Facebook-related press headlines in the past 5 years have been about privacy or advertisement scandals. They are in desperate need for some good PR if they want to restore their brand name.

Except everyone young still uses Instagram

They've been bleeding young people to Tiktok fairly heavily; it's in all their internal reports.

Re: Why Facebook is spending billions on the metaverse

#50

Post by CursedUrn »

krm01 wrote: post #9

As I was watching their 'keynote' I couldn't help but wonder about the many companies that took a similar approach and then died. Spending a ton of money on something doesn't make it automatically successful. [1] In fact, history has shown the opposite to be true. Take Facebook itself for example, it succeeded, not because it poured Billions into building its social network. Mark built something small, for a small ma…

Facebook's current market position is almost entirely based on being there at the start. Mark knows this and is terrified of missing out on the start of another big thing.
Post reply on HN