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Facebook loses users for the first time

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Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#771

Post by martin_drapeau »

randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

FB is an ad business. Changing their DNA to something else is very hard to do.

I had hope that Libra (now Diem) would bring them into personal finance. There are hard problems to solve and the industry is ripe for disruption. Every FB user could have a FB wallet. Remittance, Marketplace, loans, etc.. So many things possible across the entire globe. Not just in the West. They could eat PayPal's lunch.

Instead, Zuck turned his focus to the Metaverse. I really don't get it.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#772

Post by ehnto »

motoboi wrote: post #681
ThinkBeat wrote: post #641

I always find the constant expectation of growth puzzling. and that it is a regular occurrence. For a long time, DELL grew and grew and got bigger. Then they plateaued (for a while) and the investors were mad. There are only so many people in the world who want an FB account. and only so many companies and people who need a DELL computer. Infinite high growth is impossible to sustain. Physically.

Growth means a share bought today will have a bigger value tomorrow. Investors (people) expect a remuneration for their money. So, a public company can only survive with growth. Growth and risk/reward balance is what keep companies alive.

That's not true, public companies can survive on profits and their investors then enjoy dividends. The market just figured out that growth is more lucrative than dividends for specific people, and there is less incentive to make sustainable companies.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#773

Post by Aqueous »

randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

I think the correct thing to do would have been to pivot away from user data and ad targeting as business model and start offering premium, paid services. For instance Facebook could have very easily been Slack for businesses, as well as an enterprise internal social network. Another thing would have been to start offering appliances for private hosting of individual Facebook instances. Finally Facebook could have also started competing in cloud and leveraging its massive infrastructure for other companies to use. I might be wrong but it seems like these could have replaced Facebook’s current revenue model with stable, reliable recurring revenue while also resolving its longstanding PR problems.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#774

Post by jmacd »

There is something else going on around FB.

Almost all activity online has shifted away from the Social Graph to a Content Graph. Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. In a lot of ways it can be cringey. People just want the latest, catchiest content. TikTok and Youtube are the OGs here, but it's everywhere when you start to look. Twitter timeline changes being an awkward but working example. Discovery > Static friends list.

The entire premise FB was founded on is eroding. This isn't just Apple privacy and some regulatory strangulation. It's seismic to the business. The reason most people are still going to Facebook is incompatible with their primary activities online which is: consuming content from people-you-don't-know.

Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later.

They are doing everything they can to try to move in this direction, but the more they push it the less useful Facebook is for the average user. Instagram's discovery page is a prime example. But Reels are less good than TikTok, and whatever they are doing for short form video in Facebook is surely a hopeless game of catch up. This is classical innovator's dilemma.

The very idea that Zuckerberg straight up said they need to copy the competition harder is incomprehensible considering the resources they have.

They are going to try to do a few things. One is to anti-trust Apple (in the media at least), and the other is to hand wave (Metaverse).

The reason the Metaverse was such a non sequitur is that it is so clearly a last minute thrust coming out of the C-Suite. If you've ever worked at a highly visible tech pubco, you've seen this happen before. Weak quarters mean that product announcements get pushed up. When it is as all encompassing as the Metaverse announcement, you know something is up.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#775

Post by sumtechguy »

Breza wrote: post #707
signal11 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, Facebook was great back when MySpace and Orkut wasn’t a great experience. I suspect that’s because it wouldn’t just let anybody in. Looking back, the decision to open Facebook up to everyone was (in my book) a bad one. I’ll use the nightclub analogy — a good social network, like a good nightclub, must have bouncers (of sorts) to ensure a quality experience. I realise the conflict between this and Metcalfe…

I remember being disappointed when they dropped the college requirement. But I do think that was the right decision. You'll only ever scale so much by only enrolling .edu users.

The people who invited me into facebook do not have a degree. I have not posted anything in probably 5 years. From the activity feed spam FB sends me it looks like they both post quite a decent amount. I have have not logged in, in probably a year. When I got on there it was sort of fun reconnecting with people I had not seen in years. But after a while I remembered why we had drifted apart...

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#776

Post by hangsi »

Breza wrote: post #687
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controlling the VR metaverse... I just don't see it. Too much innovation. Too much invention. Remember FB can always purchase themselves into the market - pick up a few startups and bodge together a consistent product. I think the problem is that VR tech and apps will take too long to arrive to gain any traction with the wider public, before FB needs it. FB needs hundreds of millions/billions of users, VR hasn't pu…

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on why VR remains so niche. Decent VR hardware has been available for years. And yet relatively few people use it.

The chip shortage/pandemic has stunted what would have been a massive scale up in vr production in the last 2 years.

This has been a brake to economies of scale applied across the industry, so the existing players can put their logistic efforts in to keeping up their supply of existing products at the same price as they launched, which is enough to start competitive. Without the shortage, I expect we would have seen many more and cheaper Oculus Quests being sold.

For a point of reference, see purchasing the Valve Index, which last I saw if you buy from valve has a lead time of at least a month, despite launching in 2019.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#777

Post by wombat-man »

iamthemonster wrote: post #355
sujesh wrote: post #327

I deleted my FB a while ago and it truely helped my online mental health. The fb feed was full of false news and hate speech. I reported as much as I could but nothing happening. There wasn't any regulations and I felt more toxic on the contents. I am not gonna lie there was a positive side like knowing the news instantly but It's not worth it apparently.

It's so interesting how different people's Facebook feeds are so different. I do have excessive ads for products, that's fair enough, but I have absolutely nothing political. My only issue with Facebook is that it's poorly designed, actually very dated and cluttered, and none of my friends really use it for personal posts except me. I suspect that each Facebook user exists in a different bubble. Possibly they see som…

Facebook shows you whatever is working to keep you there. I do like reading about politics but I also mute or unfollow anyone that is putting too much of that on my feed.

Twitter is where I go to be mad about news. I've managed to keep FB about old-friend stalking.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#778

Post by aeyes »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #688
ThinkBeat wrote: post #641

I always find the constant expectation of growth puzzling. and that it is a regular occurrence. For a long time, DELL grew and grew and got bigger. Then they plateaued (for a while) and the investors were mad. There are only so many people in the world who want an FB account. and only so many companies and people who need a DELL computer. Infinite high growth is impossible to sustain. Physically.

Yes, but the stock market works on the premise of growth, they try to raise money by virtue of being on the stock market, in order get the money required to finance that growth. I would think, that a company that has plateaued should take itself off the stock market, however this doesn't seem to be happening. Such a move would probably imply some drastic changes in how a company is goverend.

Taking the company private means that you have to buy all outstanding shares. How are you going to come up with the money to do that? Valuation is usually around 20x earnings. If you do it through share buybacks, this process will take decades.

Pretty much the only way to do it is with an outside investor and in that case the company still doesn't "own itself".

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#779

Post by wombat-man »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #641

I always find the constant expectation of growth puzzling. and that it is a regular occurrence. For a long time, DELL grew and grew and got bigger. Then they plateaued (for a while) and the investors were mad. There are only so many people in the world who want an FB account. and only so many companies and people who need a DELL computer. Infinite high growth is impossible to sustain. Physically.

yeah but for a long time their stock price was built on the dream of growth. Of course you can have a publicly traded company with a steady business. A good board and leadership can keep it going.

Right now it feels like Wall street is realizing the growth party at Meta is ending. Now it's about figuring out how much, if at all, it's going to contract and what the real value of the business will be going forward.

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