The number 1 reason FB has missed is the IDFA change from Apple. It has completely crippled their ad business and their effectiveness and the majority of spend I know has gone to Google.
When FB was clearly 1st or 2nd in all GEO's around the world, they now are not even in the top 3 in many GEOs.
Facebook loses users for the first time
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#652I'm not surprised. The complete company doesn't provide any actually required product or value, just aggregating "users". And the company has the worst imaginable reputation (closed-source, awkward and stupid censorship, clear name enforcement, advertisement, users are not customers but a resource, and much more).
Interestingly this article was featured here recently: https://luttig.substack.com/p/dont-forget-microsoft
It doesn't talk about software, development, technology or service. Merely, buy others. If you don't innovate yourself you have to buy quickly everyone else before they can harm you. That is what Facebook is doing.
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#653This 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…
Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. I hope they hadn't even tried. Initially, Facebook offered lots of value in the early years in the form that users were actually able to follow their friends' lives and stay connected. You had a bunch of friends and you would see a mostly chronological list of what they had posted that you read until you recognized something you had already seen. If they had kept it th…
Well, I dunno. My friends don't post anything any more. Maybe to instagram, but even that is less now.
Facebook needed to fill that gap with content from elsewhere. That's where influencers and content creators came in. Who are way less interesting than your friends, but they do post content regularly.
I don't think facebook had a choice.
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#654This 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…
> … VR is a good play I find your analysis excellent apart from this bit. It’s really far from obvious to me that VR has any future outside a gaming niche.
The current attitude towards VR, and the "metaverse" in general, has got to be the second most delusional thing I have ever seen - due in no small part to the close integration with NFTs, the first most delusional obsession I've seen. It's complete and utter vaporware, with absolutely nothing behind it. I have done lots and lots of reading about the metaverse, what it promises, what it wants, and I still can't find a place where substituting the word "metaverse" with "cyberspace" doesn't create the same sentence. But everyone is afraid of missing out on the "next evolution of the internet" that all rational thought has gone out of the window. VR is not the future of anything besides the mentioned gaming niche.
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#655This 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…
Microsoft, for all its flaws, has strengths. They're grittier than most and ultimately, know how to deliver software products and build businesses around them... very different products and very different businesses. Leadership was a lever to these, but there was something to lever FB have never built a successful product besides Zuck's original. They have never created a good business besides the FB and program. The…
> 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 punched out of the 'early adopter'/gamer market yet and even those were balking at having to have FB accounts.
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
but TikTok comes and basically wins the war because it is as un-facebook as it can be. It can be enjoyed, or better if you follow nobody. Whatever FB's innovation is, it doesn't age well, otherwise fades so fast
Bro, you wanna send a bunch of emails to keep up with your friends. Facebook is and was the truly first social media for the masses. I hate Facebook, but I will buy its stock, and I will make money.
> Bro, you wanna send a bunch of emails to keep up with your friends. Facebook is and was the truly first social media for the masses.
Facebook was not the first. There were already mass-market social networking websites when Facebook emerged, like MySpace and Friendster.
The younger generation has already dropped Facebook, like their predecessors dropped MySpace. And they are still able to communicate with each other without using e-mail.
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#657My 2 cents, not that it's important, is that Facebook killed it's own product by A/B testing for user engagement. The product went from a cool place to see what your friends were up (bit like insta was for a while), to this sh*thole place filled with junk viral videos, adds, whacky content from a few insane friends, etc. It became like a cheap social porn dumping ground.
I really just want to see what my friends are up to. I don't want to feel that the posts I get are heavily filtered by algorithms or that 'unpopular' opinions are hidden or whatever.
The original Facebook product back in 2008-2010 was really good. If anything, I think Facebook shows how important is it to develop a product vision that is more than just 'clickbait+++' which is basically Facebook's strategy. [Around 2010, I imagine a bunch of overly nerdy socially maladjusted 20-something programmers sitting around Fakebook HQ describing to robotic-Mark how an excel-driven click-bait approach can make Fakebook way more popular than ever. "Look popularity with maths".]
Now the only thing I really use it for is business pages. [I don't even know why Google don't have a slightly better business-page experience on their maps.]
Zuckerberg, I think is a bit of a genius, but seems to lack much capacity or instinct to display technological 'taste'. That rare thing Steve Jobs valued and talked about. It's why Apple is and remains cool and why it's able to handle PR better. Apple are just much more sophisticated at controlling people's perception around the appeal of the brand. Apple provide a 'luxury' brand experience to 50% of the (developed) world. Facebook's brand is so toxic it decided to change it's name to Meta. [Note, timing the change to Meta not long before the growth slows a lot. I'm surprised Facebook was really even growing much. Well I heard most growth has come from outside the developed economies and it's a waste ground among the young in the West.]
Zuckerberg - from afar - looks like a robotic alien trying to work out the grandest legal pump and dump scheme he can pull off. I do salute him because he's so successful and I still think he'll work out how to make Meta's transition. He's got lots of cards to play in his hand and he seems pretty good at business poker. So, I also congratulate him.
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft, for all its flaws, has strengths. They're grittier than most and ultimately, know how to deliver software products and build businesses around them... very different products and very different businesses. Leadership was a lever to these, but there was something to lever FB have never built a successful product besides Zuck's original. They have never created a good business besides the FB and program. The…
I think Microsoft is also almost an essential product company. You can either get a PC or a Mac. Or Linux but even that requires getting a PC anyway. Chromebook market is still tiny.
PC != Windows
And was never. The Personal-Computer is an original product of International Business Machines (IBM) and not Microsoft. Contrary to most products shipped today it's architecture is open for industry standards and other companies. A huge success for IBM.
Microsoft shipped the pre-installed and required operating-system. You can order desktops and laptops without an operating-sytem or Linux from Lenovo (former IBM), Dell, System76, Purism, Tuxedo and many more. Vendors which aim for cheap distribution to private customers usually only ship Personal Computers with Windows. Most of these are crap and come with questionable pre-installed software - and I don't refer to Windows.
That IBM sold the PC subsidiary was the worst mistake the could ever have done, both Apple and Lenovo show how much money you can earn with long lasting high quality products. IBM lost the contact point to many customers. They need to succeed with Red Hat now. Irony, IBM use and prefer (again) ThinkPads, preinstalled with Linux.
If you say "it runs on PC" you're actually saying your software is compatible to an Intel 286 CPU or higher. Well, if it is portable?
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with most of what you wrote up to this point: > He's a super smart and prescient thinker, so he can see VR is a good play He made a school yearbook on the internet and copied some features from existing social networks like MySpace. Facebook was just in the right place at the right time and executed well. The jury is very much still out on whether "VR is a good play", too. It might turn out to be a gigantic o…
I am both a fan of blockchain and VR. I also have a strong cynic inside of me that trashes on both of them whenever it can. It's fun being me I suppose :) Blockchain is IMO in a much much much more questionable state of relevancy and usefulness than VR. Why? I workout in VR (supplemental workouts by playing Eleven Table Tennis to the max). I boardgame in VR (Demeo). My GF picks up my headset and plays Beatsaber. You…
> I still haven't seen people use it as a legitimate currency. And this includes myself
Pre-covid we had a bar that accepted BTC using Lightning Network :(
Re: Facebook loses users for the first time
#660This 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…
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’s “law”.
Also, seriously, why not just charge for Facebook and WhatsApp. WhatsApp usage is at levels now when a lot of people will pay for it — and at one point (pre-Facebook) they weren’t free in first-world markets.