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Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

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Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#41

Post by nimbius »

the one thing the article tap dances around is the fact that Meta as a company has been horribly overvalued for about the past decade. Its managed to avoid its market haircut largely with smoke and mirror efforts like marketplace and a video chat device (not to mention the strategic rebrand as 'meta.') but the billion dollar metaverse at the cusp of a market recession and record inflation was clearly more than investors were ready to pretend was a viable strategy.

people are drawing comparisons to twitter? and im not sure why. Twitter has always been a massive underperformer and basically just serves as a safe harbor for brand engagement. its worst bug is permitting any political discussion whatsoever as thats generally not brand-safe. Musk can work to lock it down a little more to appease major marketing players --which in doing so will accellerate its user exodus-- or he can start charging users for the pleasure of airing their hot takes and reduce the advertising footprint on twitter drastically, but he cannot do both.

Zuck cant do much to staunch the bleeding at Face, er, meta. Methinks its time to do what he should have done a decade ago: sell the shares and do something else if hes capable of it. if not, well, Gates has proven you can recycle your own cash endlessly as the cow chews the cud through an obtuse network of your own charities that serve no greater purpose than to launder money and perpetuate your legacy in a way that cant be cancelled or removed from the public square if youre posthumously outed as a villain.

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#42

Post by dont__panic »

ouid wrote: post #24

facebook is bad because it is run with an iron fist by a single person. Eventually Zuckerberg was surrounded by yesmen. This is almost impossible to avoid. With wealth inequality on the rise, the yesman industry has developed a lot of tradecraft that has made them better at the extraction of that wealth. This creates mania, and with no oversight, the entire company is subject to his manic whims.

Strange. I think Facebook is bad because they've turned a decent, useful product into a cash-generation machine... to the detriment of the original product. So much so that many have decided that it's not worth dealing with the cash-generating cancer to access the compromised functionality of the core product.

Zuck is in a unique position where he has full control over Facebook. He could declare today that Facebook doesn't need to generate this much profit, add an option for a chronological news feed, and turn down the ads to "KTLO" level from the current "fund the metaverse, maximum profit" levels.

I loathe Zuck because he refuses to do anything like this, despite the obvious social ills of Facebook. Maybe corporate yesmen have something to do with his choice, but it seems more likely to me that Zuck has decided to keep Facebook a cancerous mess all on his own.

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#43

Post by mola »

Invictus0 wrote: post #21

Zucc knows what he's doing. No investor was ever going to love the $40B capex on metaverse, they would happily ride the Facebook cash cow into the ground and suck the life out of the company dividend by dividend. Zucc just doesn't care about the quarterly reports, he's going to execute on his vision regardless.

Never liked Zuckerberg, but you seem correct. Facebooks trajectory was pretty obvious. Creating a TikTok clone or such would just be chasing your own tail. The only real future for Facebook is something new. It's very high risk, and can rarely be done in a public company the size of meta, but he positioned himself to make it possible. Time will tell if this bet was good (for him, for us I'm pretty sure a successful metaverse is awful)

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#45

Post by matwood »

osrec wrote: post #12
aqme28 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're more optimistic than I am that charging for verification would be an effective way to make money for Twitter. More likely I think it'll just lead to far fewer blue checks and no significant change of revenue.

And it may also make the blue ticks meaningless, if just anyone can pay and get them.

Not meaningless if they still do verification (which afaik they would).

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#46

Post by egeozcan »

cronix wrote: post #40
bhouston wrote: post #2

I suspect if Elon can get away with charging many, and probably most, heavy users of the platform a monthly fee, Zuckerberg will as well. In many ways such an outcome makes sense given Apple's ATT changes decimated targeted advertising revenue.

I actually think we should pay for the things we use. Then we can retire the "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" excuse that many just automatically throw out to justify data collection.

Most keep collecting data (making you the product) even when you pay for the product. MS Windows, Smart TVs, your graphics card driver, your popular news source even with the ad-free plan...

It looks like you cannot pay them enough to get rid of the tracking.

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#47

Post by VLM »

Follow the money not the tech for this story.

Facebook sold to individuals as a workforce automation platform for teenage girl relationships-as-a-pattern that anyone can use, AND double dipped selling to biz and gov as a propaganda outlet and that makes huge revenue until people get tired of it, disillusioned, and move on. It seems to mostly be bots and addicts now, I wouldn't go there in 2022, to actually socialize or be propagandized to.

Meta's story is "lets do the same thing over again but technologically more complicated and expensive" No Facebook enduser ever wanted to do the same stuff as FB but requiring a more expensive graphics card or shorter battery life. Meta doesn't seem to have a purpose to endusers. To technical people its an interesting challenge, but to end users its this generation's superconducting supercollider. "Well it burns stacks of cash to entertain techie people and nobody else cares". Best of luck with that biz model...

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#48

Post by pmoriarty »

cronix wrote: post #40
bhouston wrote: post #2

I suspect if Elon can get away with charging many, and probably most, heavy users of the platform a monthly fee, Zuckerberg will as well. In many ways such an outcome makes sense given Apple's ATT changes decimated targeted advertising revenue.

I actually think we should pay for the things we use. Then we can retire the "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" excuse that many just automatically throw out to justify data collection.

You're going to be the product regardless.

They'll just charge you on top of collecting and profiting from the data they collect on you.

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#49

Post by shagie »

bhouston wrote: post #2

I suspect if Elon can get away with charging many, and probably most, heavy users of the platform a monthly fee, Zuckerberg will as well. In many ways such an outcome makes sense given Apple's ATT changes decimated targeted advertising revenue.

> I suspect if Elon can get away with charging many, and probably most, heavy users of the platform a monthly fee

That's going really well so far... https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144

Re: Why Meta is tanking and how Zuckerberg can fix it

#50

Post by vlunkr »

Zuckerberg seems to really think that VR is the next ”big thing” like the iPhone. I’m curious what people here think about that. I’m currently on the skeptical side for a couple of reasons.

The tech isn’t there. These headsets are bulky and ugly, only very dedicated users are willing to wear them for hours a day. Maybe someday they’ll be the size of Google glass, but it’s certainly too early to bet your company on it.

The killer app is basically VR Chat. This already exists and has existed in non-VR forms (second life) for ages. It’s definitely a successful idea, but it appeals to a relatively niche crowd, mostly very online teens.

A phone doesn’t fully occupy your senses like VR. We have responsibilities in the real world that keep us from staying fully in VR.

NFTs. Why would they bring NFTs into the marketing? NFTs appeal to a certain crowd for sure, but everyone else is repelled by that crowd, and is sick of everything about NFTs.

Lastly, they need to work on marketing. Especially a new spokesman.

I think VR is probably here to stay this time, but they should focus on gaming. It actually works, but there needs to be some fresh ideas before people get tired of it. Send dev kits out and incentive really creative developers to get involved. Man cannot live on Beatsaber alone.

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