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Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

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Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#481

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I don't get metaverse - they seem to be throwing lots of money and people at it, and hyping it up like it's the future. But from what I've seen so far they've just built VRChat, but worse. It's been done before by other people, it's not a new thing at all (Second Life released almost 20 years ago). This isn't a project that benefits from any of Facebooks strengths - game development companies are much better position…

> game development companies are much better positioned to make compelling social VR experiences like this. I don't think that's true. Game developer company culture is heavily oriented towards making and selling products to consumers. They know how to make games people will pay for, and the entire business and culture revolves around that. With Meta and other ad-driven companies, the people aren't the consumers, the…

>What they have is a bunch of programmers who know 3D rendering and networking

Game companies haven't been stuck in the 2000s. Nowadays they are legitimate media businesses. Just look at what Riot did with Arcane, or Epic with Travis Scott's Fortnite concert. That actually felt metaverse-ish compared to the geriatric experience of Facebook's VR games.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYeFAlVC8qU)

If you look at China its even more clear that game companies are way beyond just making games. Moving into ads isn't that hard, delivering actual content and really understanding young people very much is.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#482
post #443

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> My feed is full of shit I don’t want I don't log in to Facebook very often, but when I do it's not bad at all. I scroll through a few updates from friends and family and catch up with a few people, then I close it for another week or two. There isn't just one "Facebook" that we all see, obviously. Your feed is going to be a reflection of the groups you've joined and the friends you keep (and haven't muted). If you'…

I can describe a tale of two Facebooks. It was at first the best of times and now the worst of times.. In the beginning was my old account that had basically mostly friend status updates with photos. I deleted this account during the last election and covid pandemic to get a break. I rejoined later and despite adding most of my same friends it's been a complete disaster. So many ads and group suggestions. I feel like…

This is roughly my experience, but I didn't delete Facebook in-between. It's just terrible now. I watched as the newsfeed was aggressively tuned for outrage. I used to see updates about friends. Now it's just outrage and clickbait and ads. So many ads. Even with adblockers. I just can't use it anymore. It's so terrible.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#483

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I am not on FB but I use Reddit and I’m a little worried about how they will try to monetize when they go public. I have a feeling eventually it will become unusable. I’ve been a Redditor for 10 years now and I really hope the marketing via outrage culture doesn’t make its way there but I feel like it’s only natural.

> I have a feeling eventually it will become unusable. > I really hope the marketing via outrage culture doesn’t make its way there... Reddit has been unusable for at least the past five years owing to how they tailor the homepage and r/all to be a wasteland of outrage designed to keep users seething at others. It's basically become the two minutes hate.

r/all has never been usable if you didn’t unsubscribe from default subreddits.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#484
post #169

This is from Mark Zuckerberg's post. I think it's a decent explanation of their performance. Historically Facebook always made these longer-term bets and they've typically paid off. "Before I get to that, I want to briefly touch on our Q4 results, which I know Sheryl and Dave are going to go deeper on. I'm proud of the work our teams did here. We shipped products, our community continued to grow, and businesses of al…

Well all of those point seem to sum up to: "We're getting beat by Tiktok and we're going to catch up by being more like tiktok" That doesn't exactly exude confidence.

The media format is the same but it is superficial and a shallow moat at best. The social networks are quite different:

FB: formal private (or special interest, in Groups);

Insta: close private (or public if you are a verified content producer);

TikTok: still about building ad hoc network effects based on content alone.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#485
post #455

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I've tried working in VR and it's... ok. If you're ok with working on a single monitor at At 1440p and above resolution isn't there yet and pushing multiple monitors through to the headset is still (to my knowledge) not practical. The remote desktop-like apps I've tried only do a single monitor. I like the bet that Quest 2 made with making the headset do all the processing, but it fails for tasks like this. I think e…

Here’s the thing though. I remember when the iPhone came out. The web browser experience was a horrible low resolution experience; it was slow, clunky, and you had to charge it every day. Yet none of it mattered - almost overnight everyone became glued to their phones. It didn’t need hyping up like “just wait for 4k to come out and then it will really take off” - people wanted it despite all the original flaws. Same…

The original iPhone was also better than anything else mobile at the time though. Much better.

As clunky an experience you describe, the rest were far far worse.

VR is a cool niche experience, but the friction is still far too high for me. I wear glasses, and it needs to be only slightly more friction than that. Whether AR or VR, I don't much even care, as software experiences will adapt to the hardware at some point.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#486
post #365

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Why not? It worked when they copied Snapchat's stories feature.

Bacause FB/Meta and none of it's other incarnations is not fashionable among young generation anymore, it's platform for old people. I'm wondering what kind of play would be successful long-term in this scenario with long-lasting social platform to capture next generation which is naturally inclined to be in opposition when it comes to parents way of life. Maybe creating some kind of "undercover" division not officia…

Pretty sure their whole foray into metaverse and Oculus VR is to capture the younger generation of the future.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#487
post #461

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> My feed is full of shit I don’t want I don't log in to Facebook very often, but when I do it's not bad at all. I scroll through a few updates from friends and family and catch up with a few people, then I close it for another week or two. There isn't just one "Facebook" that we all see, obviously. Your feed is going to be a reflection of the groups you've joined and the friends you keep (and haven't muted). If you'…

This, along with all the replies down below is the most un-HN comment I have read for the past 10+ years. Facebook is doomed and crap was the accepted norm. Especially during pandemic when I get to see update from my friends. Their new born, or kids finally going to school. I have a suspicious feeling many of the negative and politics went somewhere else like Twitter. And the rest are there you could easily filter ou…

During the run up to the Brexit referendum, Facebook became very political. I just blocked all political groups that popped up because friends were sharing or commenting under their posts. That made it much more sane and pleasant to scroll through.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#488
post #354

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> My feed is full of shit I don’t want I don't log in to Facebook very often, but when I do it's not bad at all. I scroll through a few updates from friends and family and catch up with a few people, then I close it for another week or two. There isn't just one "Facebook" that we all see, obviously. Your feed is going to be a reflection of the groups you've joined and the friends you keep (and haven't muted). If you'…

Ive done that to the point where it frequently says "there's nothing to show here" instead of a feed. I know people I'm interested in hearing from are posting things, but Facebook will never decide to show them to me, regardless of my settings

I get 'suggested posts'.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#489

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So in other words TikTok has made them have to pause and switch to prioritize Reels (which are in every way worse than TikTok BTW) and that means less eyeballs on ads. Honestly Facebook at this point is entirely unusable. My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people): Reels, half baked “memes” that are just really random thoughts from pe…

I’m assuming you are using a Pi-hole to block the ads? From my understanding that is becoming less effective with companies like YouTube and Facebook since they serve ads directly from their domain.

Obviously not feasible for everyone but you can solve this by:

1. Subscribing to YouTube premium 2. Not using Facebook

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