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Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

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Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#11

Post by boxmonster »

n4r9 wrote: post #9
boxmonster wrote: post #3

I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it w…

Not to detract from your point about Meta, but isn't the online world in books like Snow Crash just as much of a corporate wet dream? I suppose it's more libertarian-corporate than what you might call the liberal-corporate of today, but it's still a brutal and gritty world.

> brutal and gritty world

I think that's the attraction for early adopters who build much of the foundations. Sort of like crypto, web3, DeFi and all that right now. A Wild West were only the smart survive and you can buy drugs and guns if you know how.

Zuckerberg's vision of the Metaverse is blessed by human resource managers who insist everyone follows the code of conduct and no one has genitals. It's bland and comfy, like a mall.

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#12

Post by gdulli »

boxmonster wrote: post #3

I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it w…

> I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the early internet.

The early internet having been so organically developed for fun and utility happened because money wasn't yet involved/in charge.

At this point could there ever again emerge any major new technology that wasn't either developed by a huge corporation or quickly acquired by a huge corporation?

Will we ever see a scenario again where such an important technology is allowed decades to emerge while it's ignored by industry for being too academic, too early, too much for nerds?

Today, even Wordle couldn't stay independent. How could anyone build a multiverse popular enough to have a network effect but not get invaded by spam, money, predation?

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#13

Post by nier »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #7

The US is a small percentage of FB usage. It is the internet in some countries. Amazing that an iOS update did this though.

According to this article [1] in the New York Times the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency isn’t among the four biggest challenges for Facebook. Daring Fireball has it summarized [2] like so:

“The age problem”: Young people aren’t using Facebook at all and are using Instagram less, but the success of both platforms as advertising revenue bonanzas is predicated on usage by the youth demographic.

“The innovation problem”: Facebook hasn’t invented a new hit since the blue app itself and its other successes were all acquired.

“The metaverse problem”: They’re betting the company on AR/VR, but it remains to be seen whether that’s going to be a big thing.

“The antitrust problem”: No summary necessary.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/briefing/facebook-metaver... [2] https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/facebooks_problems

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#14

Post by [deleted] »

twobitshifter wrote: post #10
mensetmanusman wrote: post #7

The US is a small percentage of FB usage. It is the internet in some countries. Amazing that an iOS update did this though.

And it’s difficult for facebook to argue that apple giving users the option to keep their data private was anticompetitive. This is the classic problem of building on someone else’s platform. I know facebook tried their own phone and bubble based android launchers, but they seemed to give that up too easily. In comparison to the money being spent on meta, attacking their weaknesses on the device front might have been…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#15

Post by bdangubic »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #7

The US is a small percentage of FB usage. It is the internet in some countries. Amazing that an iOS update did this though.

how much money do you think they make in countries where they are "the internet..."?

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#16

Post by boxmonster »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #4
boxmonster wrote: post #3

I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it w…

> I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. The "Metaverse" might be a flop, but what about other VR games? There's tons of good ones out there. And if you have a decent gaming PC, you can use your Oculus with it and play all the games on SteamVR.

That's my second disappointment. I prefer programming to playing games. Programming is my game. If I could stake a claim in the Metaverse and build Spalding Gray world (boxmonster comes from his Monster in a Box) so that Spalding was part of the virtual world then I would. Something similar to how I can build a website. Spalding Gray world just an example of what I'd like to be able to freely do for very little cost. The Metaverse should be more like Minecraft and less like AOL.

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#17

Post by boxmonster »

seydor wrote: post #6
boxmonster wrote: post #3

I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it w…

What you describe exists in opensimulator worlds. It's friday night, so a lot of virtual parties going on: https://opensimworld.com/events

Cool, this is closer to what I think will ultimately be successful. From the FAQ: What is OpenSimWorld? OpenSimWorld is a directory of 3D worlds that use the open source OpenSimulator software and are connected to each other via the hypergrid functionality. OpenSimWorld is not a Grid, and we don't host or rent regions, we only provide an easy way to discover amazing virtual worlds and to advertise your own region.

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#18

Post by boxmonster »

gdulli wrote: post #12
boxmonster wrote: post #3

I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it w…

> I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the early internet. The early internet having been so organically developed for fun and utility happened because money wasn't yet involved/in charge. At this point could there ever again emerge any major new technology that wasn't either developed by a huge corpor…

The early internet was funded and created by the US government and DNS was run by them too. Then open standards committees were created to make sure everyone spoke the same tech language. No one owns the internet. There's no reason this can't be recreated.

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#19

Post by gdulli »

boxmonster wrote: post #18
gdulli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the early internet. The early internet having been so organically developed for fun and utility happened because money wasn't yet involved/in charge. At this point could there ever again emerge any major new technology that wasn't either developed by a huge corpor…

The early internet was funded and created by the US government and DNS was run by them too. Then open standards committees were created to make sure everyone spoke the same tech language. No one owns the internet. There's no reason this can't be recreated.

There was an innocence that hadn't yet been lost then. We didn't have to worry about security, toxicity, and money in the early hobbyist/enthusiast internet of the 90s. We were able to let it be "built organically by people because it was fun".

The reason not everything was a mall was because it wasn't yet mainstream and there was a years-long head start before monetizing it at scale was solved. Today, the monetization (and other predatory) patterns already exist and will be ported over to any metaverse from the start.

Any metaverse will resemble Facebook or something equivalent. Discoverability will resemble Google or something equivalent. Community interaction will resemble Reddit or something equivalent. I don't see how this would be avoided.

Re: Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

#20

Post by ergocoder »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #7

The US is a small percentage of FB usage. It is the internet in some countries. Amazing that an iOS update did this though.

In Thailand, the new Bangkok governor do Facebook live almost every day on his work. 100,000+ views on almost every video from a city of 8m.

It is truly refreshing to have this kind of transparency.

I have faith in FB. It is a good communication/community tool. They have to tone down the VR thing a bit. It is not the time for VR yet.

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