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Meta Myths

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Re: Meta Myths

#181

Post by JoeJonathan »

paxys wrote: post #164
hintymad wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The All-In hosts gave a reasonable comment: Meta may well get a leap in humanity, but it should at least show incremental progress to the investors given such a huge quarterly investment.

In terms of pure technology there has been a crazy amount of incremental progress in the area. We have gone from the first kickstarter for Oculus (when VR was just a sci-fi dream) to the release of Quest Pro and games like Half-Life: Alyx in under a decade. Of course shareholders really want to count actual monetary returns as progress, and it's the job of the CEO to decide whether prioritizing short term gains is ac…

The thing is, speaking as a total non expert here, people have been taking about VR since the 90s, and it’s always kind of sucked. It’ll get much better over the next decade, of course. But even then, how many people want to sensorially sever themselves from the outside world? Lots of people who Meta thinks might use VR for work have, you know, other human bodies to take care of.

Re: Meta Myths

#182

Post by JoeJonathan »

nicolashahn wrote: post #131
deckard1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, it's a bit weird that Marques Brownlee recently gave a better presentation on Meta/Metaverse than what Zuckerberg cooked up. But I think that's the intent. Because when you lay out Meta's strategy so naked, like Marques did, then you realize that no one is going to buy into it. You need early adopters and those are the ones that are going to sniff out that you're actually building a dystopian privacy-invading S…

I don't think the "metaverse" needs to succeed as much as the hardware does. A set of AR glasses that aren't bulky or sci-fi enables a huge amount of brand new functionality, on maybe even more than smartphones did. In that case, if Meta has the best option on the market, it doesn't need to write the killer app, someone else can do it, just like the App Store enabled iPhone developers to do. I'm less optimistic on th…

Not sure if the technology will get there, but I can see AR being much more useful. I don’t want to cut myself off from the outside world, but I’d love to be able to put on a pair of glasses that allow me to use a giant monitor without needing an actual monitor. Or a home theater. For me, something as simple (though it’s probably technically complex) as a high resolution screen coupled with AirPods for watching movies would be a killer app. And if I could use those same glasses to work or bs on the internet (on a plane, in a cafe, on a bus), I’d be all in… and I’m willing to bet everyone else would be as well.

I suspect this is what Apple is trying to do.

Re: Meta Myths

#183

Post by JoeJonathan »

nineplay wrote: post #89
dont__panic wrote: post #69

Myth 1: Users Are Deserting Facebook ..The problem with this narrative is that Meta is still adding users: the company is up to 2.93 billion Daily Active Users (DAUs), an increase of 50 million, and 3.71 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs), an increase of 60 million.. I've been wondering about this for a while now: who are these people who are still using Facebook every day? All of my family has reduced facebook usag…

> Who are these people who are still using Facebook every day? Me. Most everyone I know. Move from the tech bubble to the suburban parent bubble and I think you'll that nothing is replacing FB anytime soon. The school pages are there, the kid's clubs and activities and team pages are all there. The neighborhood pages are all there, NextDoor exists of course but it tends to be poor imitation of the FB group. I know wh…

I’m glad you pointed out that Reddit gets a free pass. Aside from the fact that r/TheDonald flourished there, r/all regularly shows videos of people dying and men smacking women (r/pussypassdenied). There’s also a weird, self-congratulatory sense of community that leads to mob politics and pile ons in a way distinct from Facebook and Twitter. I think it means something that people identify as redditors, and not, say, as tweeters.

Re: Meta Myths

#184

Post by pascalxus »

deckard1 wrote: post #104
alerter wrote: post #37

I always wondered if it was a mistake for Facebook to try to rapidly casualise VR after acquiring Oculus. If they spent even a small fraction of their metaverse billions developing high-end, niche products (flight/mech sims etc.) then they could cultivate a loyal base of affluent users. It probably wouldn't be profitable by itself, but it would grow their user base and act as a nice showcase of what VR is capable of.…

yeah, it's a bit weird that Marques Brownlee recently gave a better presentation on Meta/Metaverse than what Zuckerberg cooked up. But I think that's the intent. Because when you lay out Meta's strategy so naked, like Marques did, then you realize that no one is going to buy into it. You need early adopters and those are the ones that are going to sniff out that you're actually building a dystopian privacy-invading S…

Yeah, the zoom replacement looks really cool. Butt...

The biggest problem I have doing zoom calls with family is an unstable internet connection at their end and I don't think the metaverse is going to be able to solve that. And besides, I'm certainly not going to pay 500$ for a headset just for Awesome VR calls, if i can just use a phone call.

The biggest potential is being able to work remotely. Just imagine all the remote work Metaverse could make possible. And 500$ headset might just be in the budget for a midsized company looking to expand it's workforce.

Re: Meta Myths

#185

Post by jjulius »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #176
Kye wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has Tesla changed? All it did was show a market for non-garbage electric cars. Other more established companies are running laps around it now. How much of that $25B went to the ever-retreating promises of self-driving?

1900 car companies were started in the US. There are only 2 that have never gone bankrupt: Ford and Tesla.

One of those has been operating ~100 years less than the other.

Re: Meta Myths

#187

Post by andybak »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #163
karmakaze wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't comment on how that 4B/quarter is being spent. However the Quest 2 has been the biggest success in VR to date. Why couldn't some of those billions have been spent on getting a Quest 3 ready for sale for Fall/Xmas 2022? It would be like Apple not releasing new iPhones level of missed opportunity. Or perhaps it's a huge selfish gamble thinking, let's get our product perfected before everyone realizes how big th…

There's the meta quest pro which released last week, but the tech for something in the same price range as the Quest 2 but better probably isn't a thing yet. The Quest 2 did have a $100 price increase 6 months ago.

Carmack was arguing for a cheaper, lighter headset instead of the Quest Pro:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/carmack-wants-a-250-v...

> As a "counterpoint" to the push for the Quest Pro in the Meta offices, Carmack says he "personally still [tries] to drum up interest internally in this vision of a super cheap, super lightweight headset." His rallying cry, he says, is a target of "$250 and 250 grams" for a headset that cuts out as many extraneous features as possible while still being usable (the Quest Pro weighs 722 grams, while the Quest 2 is 503 grams). That could help bring "super light comforts" to "more people at low-end price points."

Re: Meta Myths

#188

Post by andybak »

JoeJonathan wrote: post #181
paxys wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of pure technology there has been a crazy amount of incremental progress in the area. We have gone from the first kickstarter for Oculus (when VR was just a sci-fi dream) to the release of Quest Pro and games like Half-Life: Alyx in under a decade. Of course shareholders really want to count actual monetary returns as progress, and it's the job of the CEO to decide whether prioritizing short term gains is ac…

The thing is, speaking as a total non expert here, people have been taking about VR since the 90s, and it’s always kind of sucked. It’ll get much better over the next decade, of course. But even then, how many people want to sensorially sever themselves from the outside world? Lots of people who Meta thinks might use VR for work have, you know, other human bodies to take care of.

> and it’s always kind of sucked.

Some of us quite like it.

Re: Meta Myths

#189

Post by bryanlarsen »

jjulius wrote: post #185
bryanlarsen wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1900 car companies were started in the US. There are only 2 that have never gone bankrupt: Ford and Tesla.

One of those has been operating ~100 years less than the other.

Tesla has been operating far longer than the vast majority of the 1898 others.

Maybe a better way to state it is that Tesla has been alive and independent longer than ~1895/1900 American car companies.

Re: Meta Myths

#190

Post by stephc_int13 »

miketery wrote: post #60
stephc_int13 wrote: post #36

I am pretty sure that Kodak or Nokia had pretty healthy results when the wind turned for them. Those kinds of ships are so big that it is very easy for managers, investors and employees to convince themselves that everything is _fine_. The biggest problem, for Meta, in my opinion, is not the brand, not the business model and not the competition. The problem is much worse because it is internal and probably too late t…

Can you expand more on the one truck pony? My understanding is that they have some of the best build tools, AB testing infra, and global scalability.

Exactly.
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