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Facebook loses users for the first time

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Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#761

Post by tinyhouse »

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…

He did innovate and more importantly, executed well. Facebook groups, marketplace, buying Oculus, all great plays. They have something like 1.9B daily users. At this point there isn't much growth left and user decline is expected. Facebook don't need to be rescued. Still very healthy.

Now regarding VR. I'm really happy he is going all in on it. He might fail but it's a bold move. Too early to tell but I'm not betting against him.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#762

Post by netcan »

amelius wrote: post #684
DrBazza wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has multi-billion dollar branches - Office, OS, Azure, XBox, Activision, I'm sure I've missed one. It also completely fluffed Nokia. And dodged the bullet that is Yahoo. It's pretty resilient. FB? Like others have said, the social media FB itself is pretty weak, and like you also said - addiction, and walled garden are the locks in. It can only grow financially by (more) acquisitions.

FB has Oculus, which could be compared to XBox (though not yet in size).

It's in a different league in terms of size, at this point.

Also, FB bought Oculus. It has grown since, but most of where they are is on trajectory from the purchase. Meanwhile, VR as a whole is neither a big not profitable market. The competition are also a bunch of upstart-ey businesses/divisions limited by investor generosity.

Zuck makes good acquisitions, no doubt about that, but Oculus isn't an Xbox yet.

Xbox, OTOH, is proof that Microsoft could enter a completely different market, compete, win and create a whole new business division. It was already a mature market.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#763

Post by mettamage »

fallous wrote: post #718
mettamage wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 apologize for the pedantry but "blockchain" != "cryptocurrency." My inner cynic is bearish on cryptocurrencies, VR (at least in broad adoption), and to a lesser extent blockchain tech but of the three the one that has the least-worst chance of finding a useful broad fit IMO is the use of blockchain tech since it's really nothing more than a trustless method of double-entry accounting and a potential means of avoidi…

I agree, and fair enough. VR will get broad adoption, a few things need to happen before it will (e.g. 4000x4000 per eye) but the hardware innovations needed to get there aren't big wild things. They are simply things that will become a thing through incremental progress.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#764

Post by fleddr »

drexlspivey wrote: post #663
josefrichter wrote: post #131

My 16yo daughter says FB is for old people and nobody in her age group is using it.

I stopped using facebook in 2013 when I started getting invites from my aunts and my parent’s friends

Well, thankfully the culture to hate on the elders of your very own family for a lack of cool points is not universal.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#765

Post by mettamage »

Brotkrumen wrote: post #645
mettamage wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rented a VR headset for a month a while ago. I think I bought most of the top games to play around with, but all feel a bit gimmicky and lacking depth. I'd claim that VR will be niche until it becomes AR. When I can see my keyboard and get multiple floaty screens,that will be productivity. Pokemon Go in AR? Skyrim AR? AR shooters in converted warehouses? Horror games in my house? That'll be games.

> When I can see my keyboard and get multiple floaty screens,that will be productivity.

The Quest 2 supports the magic keyboard and has multiple screens in the home screen.

Have you played Eleven Table Tennis? Have you played Thrill of the Fight? That's exercise right there!

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#766

Post by polypodiopsi »

netcan wrote: post #578
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…

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…

"It's all about pushing for revenue. Some newly invented fee that most customers don't know they're paying. Some new way of charging both sides of a transaction. More of something. Generating revenue from customer data, float, 3rd party deals... taking advantage of moat. FB would be really good at that."

I'm curious: do you have any awareness of the fact that there are very unethical actions suggested in what you are discussing here casually?

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#767

Post by wombat-man »

SergeAx wrote: post #731
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 am an owner of Oculus Quest 2, had some VR hands-on experience before and I think that Quest 2 is a solid product worth every cent (but probably heavily sponsored). It is a best of two worlds: I can use it standalone and I can connect it to my PC and play Steam VR titles. Meta has interesting products for VR work: virtual desktop, meetings/calls with presentation slides. They are one step from decent AR: their pass…

Definitely interested in the virtual desktop thing, but everything else feels pretty meh. I do like a VR game from time to time but I really don't think I want to be doing VR meetings and stuff.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#768

Post by grumbel »

kranke155 wrote: post #676
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…

Facebook bought Oculus and although their hardware is still good, they are being beat in the software and overall hardware experience by Valve. A far smaller company but they built - Valve Index and Half Life Alyx (widely considered the best game in VR). The Index isn’t perfect, but the actual story of Oculus is just them making a cruddy MVP, Valve taking the time to show their far superior prototypes, and allowing t…

> Virtually all the innovation in VR was made by Valve, the only innovation Facebook has added is inside out tracking.

That hasn't been true for a long while. Having a room-scale VR system back in 2016 certainly made Valve look quite a bit ahead of Oculus's "Rift is a sitting experience, have an Xbox controller" disaster.

But these days Oculus is far ahead, they are constantly adding new features (AR, hand tracking, wireless, standalone, 2D app integration, etc), while SteamVR is still mostly the same as it was back in 2016. At the moment SteamVR is barely even usable and full of bugs (resolution and input settings regularly disappear).

That's not to say that Oculus is the only one innovating, Microsoft's WMR Portal was a great attempt at bringing the Desktop into VR and they were the first ones with 6DOF tracking in a standalone headset. Some of the AR pass-through stuff, that Quest2 has just added, could be done on Daydream years ago.

But Daydream is dead, WMR seems to be on life support and SteamVR isn't getting any improvements either, all while Facebook went full throttle and is pumping out new VR features every few months. The only one that might have a chance at competing with Facebook's VR effort at this point is Sony with PSVR2 and maybe Apple, but their VR doesn't seem to not be aiming at the mass market.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#769

Post by wombat-man »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #640
yason wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree. Adding Messenger, groups, and events were good moves, but they ruined the feed so badly it soured the whole thing. Should've stuck to being social networking instead of trying to be whatever the feed is supposed to be now. They could've easily expanded into more social features, longer-form stuff like Livejournal, personal creative stuff like Deviantart, and personal creative/selling like Etsy and Bandcamp a…

I'm pretty much in it for the baby pictures and vacation photos at this point, but those are starting to thin out as my friends and loose connections are moving on from the platform.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#770

Post by cma »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #691
rvba wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without a stream of new ideas and products (unlike, say, Apple) Apple has no new products in a long time, just overpriced toys that are sold due to good marketing. Most of their money comes from market positioning and closed eco system. Thry were innovative in the past (that first iphone reveal), but for last years they basically are an app store that takes a 30% cut.

Well I am writing this on a new M1 MacBook Pro which is the best laptop computer I have ever owned. And that is because Apple developed their own chips that are an amazing leap forward in power efficiency, so I can have a laptop which I do heavy, CPU intensive work on all day without worrying about the battery.

Moreso that Apple bought exclusivity of TSMC/ASML's process about a year past everyone else. Similar to their microdrive exclusivity they bought for ipod.
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