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Meta Myths

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Re: Meta Myths

#91

Post by JeremyReimer »

sofixa wrote: post #68
miketery wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaverse is not bombing. It’s simply not tied to one platform. Between TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft, call of duty (and other triple A multiplayer games), we’re already there. Meta can’t win this one. Same way that no single game publisher can dominate video games. Even the hardware, fine meta becomes the first “Nintendo”. So what? The PlayStations and Xbox’s will come. No one will let Meta have a monopoly.

> Between TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft, call of duty (and other triple A multiplayer games), we’re already there. How are those "metaverse"?

The confusion and disconnect comes from the fact that the Metaverse, by definition, cannot ever exist. Zuckerberg is chasing a fantasy.

I wrote in more detail about it here [1], but the basic gist is:

1. A real "Metaverse" that isn't just another video game would require every tech company to agree on a single standard for a MMO world, and

2. There are zero financial reasons why any other company would agree to a) wait for a standard to be agreed upon and b) cede the majority of their profits to the owner of this singular Metaverse.

Therefore, a real Metaverse can never happen. Which makes it even sillier that Mark Zuckerberg continues to go all-in on this vision.

[1] https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=287

Re: Meta Myths

#92

Post by naravara »

PaulWaldman wrote: post #8

I quiet quite Facebook about a year ago. This wasn't intentional or purposeful, the platform was just no longer serving content that I found interesting. My browers is still logged in though and I see ads by Facebook while browsing other sites. Am I still considered a DAU? If so, is Facebook the new DoubleClick?

I've basically stopped using Facebook as a social network anymore, almost none of my friends post to it and much of what I see is shilling. But it's also functionally replaced CraigsList for me to sell things or give them away as well as as a news bulletin board for various communities I'm in (community garden, my gym, my local neighborhood news).

So in a way, I don't use Facebook in the way I've always used it but I've had to confront that I'm still checking it every couple of days.

Re: Meta Myths

#93

Post by [deleted] »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #70
rmvt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their engineering culture as a whole is a one trick pony. what do you mean by this? what's their one trick?

The most important component of a technology company is its engineering culture. This is something that is built early, most of the time with a strong influence from the founders/CTO. Once it is built and scaled up, it can still change but very slowly. You can hire extremely talented outsiders (John Carmack) but it won't do much. A company like Meta is like an overfitted AI model, they can do one thing very well and…

[deleted]

Re: Meta Myths

#94

Post by TwoNineA »

mjr00 wrote: post #33

Interesting article. People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. Since the pivot and rename happened a year ago, the metaverse has probably bombed -- and I say probably only because nobody can define exactly what it is, still , beyond people having VR meetings with odd pseudo-Mii avatars -- and the investors convinced that Zuckerberg was…

> People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time.

No, people want Meta/Facebook to fail because frankly, they are evil.

- Instagram is toxic to young girls: https://childmind.org/blog/instagram-is-harmful-to-teenage-s...

- Misinformation: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=facebook+misinformation

- How many people died because of Covid conspiracy theories they read on Facebook?

Re: Meta Myths

#95

Post by colinmhayes »

mjr00 wrote: post #33

Interesting article. People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. Since the pivot and rename happened a year ago, the metaverse has probably bombed -- and I say probably only because nobody can define exactly what it is, still , beyond people having VR meetings with odd pseudo-Mii avatars -- and the investors convinced that Zuckerberg was…

The only real question that meta has is Mark. As far as I can tell there is no reason for mark to ever listen to investors and scrap his passion projects in order to increase profitability. Sure he'll crank up the ads to keep them happy, but in the end he has unlimited money and can't be fired, and that's not changing even if meta literally loses money for the next decade. It seems that with the metaverse he's embraced that which is why he effectively told wall st. to fuck off on the earnings call last week.

Re: Meta Myths

#96

Post by colinmhayes »

TwoNineA wrote: post #94
mjr00 wrote: post #33

Interesting article. People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. Since the pivot and rename happened a year ago, the metaverse has probably bombed -- and I say probably only because nobody can define exactly what it is, still , beyond people having VR meetings with odd pseudo-Mii avatars -- and the investors convinced that Zuckerberg was…

> People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. No, people want Meta/Facebook to fail because frankly, they are evil. - Instagram is toxic to young girls: https://childmind.org/blog/instagram-is-harmful-to-teenage-s... - Misinformation: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=facebook+misinformation - How many people died because of Covid consp…

Meta literally facilitated genocide in Myanmar as well as sex slavery by failing to properly screen ads and in some cases didn't even have anybody who could read the language they were in.

Re: Meta Myths

#97

Post by colinmhayes »

noncoml wrote: post #87

Maybe I’m being a bit too cynical, but why would someone take time to write this article if they think Meta is doing great? My guess is that they are stuck with a lot of shares and want the price to go up to get rid of them. If I thought Meta is doing great, I wouldn’t try to convince others that, I would take the opportunity to buy and horde as many stocks as possible.

> but why would someone take time to write this article if they think Meta is doing great?

Because you're a tech blogger who gets paid to blog about tech and don't have any better ideas this week?

Re: Meta Myths

#98

Post by dpratt »

r00fus wrote: post #77
eklitzke wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the Meta Quest Pro is a pretty high-end product.

For $1500. Who's buying?

The amount of people who are willing to pay $1500 for high-quality VR hardware is not a huge market, but a rabid one filled with enthusiasts and early adopters. It's likely enough to fund research into how to produce a more mass market solution.

The amount of people in the first group who are willing to pay for a device that requires you to tie every single action and usage into Meta's data-pipeline Hoover of personal information is likely near zero.

Re: Meta Myths

#99

Post by zdragnar »

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…

Rural countryside in the Midwest here. Our dog decided to escape and go on an adventure a few weeks back. The person who found him went to the local Facebook group for lost dogs and after not seeing him there for a few hours finally called animal control (where we, as not really Facebook users, had reported him missing).

It's pretty wild what an alternate reality Facebook creates when you don't use it but others do.

Re: Meta Myths

#100

Post by scarface74 »

naravara wrote: post #88
scarface74 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words: "vertical integration is good." It can also weigh you down and keep you from advancing your technology. Counterexample: Apple.

Apple has clearly had difficulties scaling its company to maintain this sort of integration though. They're not bad enough to materially harm it, but you can see the seams. Nothing hides problems like success so I suspect, if Apple does start to founder in the next decade, we'll look back and blame the nest of internal dependencies they have leading them to fall behind peers using off-the-shelf parts.

I see just the opposite. The Mac was the last outlier in Apple’s integration. From the software side, Swift UI is bringing all of their software development together.
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