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To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying

To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end. And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did.

koonsolo 5y ago
I agree that Facebook and Zuch can't be that stupid. But for me, I can't see this working. There is no VR game that really killed it. I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. So it's not a "idiots!", but more of a "what am I missing here?". Will be interesting to see this play out
- rblatz 5y ago
  I've got a group of 6 of us that play Echo Arena on the Quest 2 about 3 hours every week. Beat saber is also a fun game, but does get a bit stale for most people after a couple weeks. None of these are VR's Halo, but it seems that VR is getting out of the tech demo/hobbyist space and into a broader market appeal. If facebook keeps iterating and pushing out quality improvements at the current price point it's just a matter of time.
- T-A 5y ago
  > I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. Roblox has more than 200 million daily active users; 67% of them are under 16 [1]. Where will they go when hormones hit and blocky avatars no longer seem all that compelling? [1] https://backlinko.com/roblox-users https://backlinko.com/roblox-users
  - JetSpiegel 5y ago
    > Where will they go when hormones hit and blocky avatars no longer seem all that compelling? To college, where actual humans will be available for porking at all hours. If this Meta thing is a success, there might not be a following generation.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    My kid plays Roblox. We have all kinds of devices here: xbox, Pc, tablet and mobile phones. Guess where he plays it on... yeah, on his mobile phone. And how he communicates with his friends, no video, no calls, but just chat text. I honestly don't see this generation move to intense communication/experience, when they now prefer the most casual tech.
brap 5y ago
IG and WA were already wildly popular on a global scale when they were bought, though. People clearly wanted those. Is anyone on board with this “metaverse” thing outside of SV? To me this seems less like the IG and WA acquisitions, and more like the much hyped Facebook Phone and Facebook Home projects (RIP).
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I think it's even worse... does anyone outside of Facebook and the press take their Metaverse demos seriously? Everyone I know and work with universally thinks they're a joke. They've spent how much money on this janky uncanny nonsense? You'd think they'd at least stumble into one redeeming quality, but it escapes them.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    I think a version of the meta verse will arise eventually, but when have you ever known a major innovation to come from a tech company that is already huge in a relatively unrelated area? They just get bogged down and start eating themselves.
    - delecti 5y ago
      I don't think this is that unrelated. There are certainly plenty of examples of things about this related to a company's primary focus. There are several Amazon products that are pretty huge since they started as just "books" (Echo, Kindle, AWS), Netflix streaming after DVDs, the entire ecosystem of iOS devices after starting with Macs.
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      > when have you ever known a major innovation to come from a tech company that is already huge in a relatively unrelated area? Xerox (modern computer), AT&T (Unix), Sony (PlayStation), Google (Maps, GMail), Apple (iPhone), Amazon (AWS)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
vmception 5y ago
Zuck and The Book have a lot of dumb, cringeworthy, failed initiatives that have nothing to do with those surprisingly high valued acquisitions a decade ago.
lovecg 5y ago
Also reminds me of all the skepticism surrounding the iPhone launch. I remember those joke ad spoofs making fun of the actual phone feature. Yet here we are and who uses actual voice calls anymore?
wpietri 5y ago
They were great acquisitions because Facebook failed to compete in those markets. Facebook continues to fail to compete in the youth market. I don't think failing to innovate and then buying your way out of the hole is a sign of particular acumen. And they're still failing to innovate. Facebook now will be "retooling" toward "serving young adults the north star, rather than optimizing for older people." https://twitter.com/sarafischer/status/1452744573084708869 https://twitter.com/sarafischer/status/1452744573084708869 In practice what this means is that they have the same problem they did before, but antitrust scrutiny means they can't buy their way out of it this time.
- tubby12345 5y ago
  >I don't think failing to innovate and then buying your way out of the hole is a sign of particular acumen. I mean this is classic moving of goals posts - the only measure of acumen the CEO of a publically traded company is that little number called the share price. whether he buoys that number by brain-genius innovations or by brain-genius acquisitions, he's still demonstrating brain-genius business acumen (the proof of this seemingly tautological claim is that there are plenty of other companies that have failed to acquire their way out of irrelevance).
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Not at all. I consider this in particular deeply incorrect: "only measure of acumen the CEO of a publicly traded company is that little number called the share price". And I'm hardly alone here. Indeed, the whole reason Facebook is in public doghouse right now is Zuckerberg's focus on dominance and profit without regard to little externalities like genocide. So you may have different goalposts for him, but that doesn't mean I've moved anything. If I'm trying to understand somebody's acumen, I want to see what they can do on their own. As someone else pointed out, Zuckerberg didn't even really have the one idea that he successfully exploited. He's rich, sure, but, "He's so rich that he must be a genius" is pretty far from my criteria for genius.
    - tubby12345 5y ago
noncoml 5y ago
> the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened Don't want to downplay it, but having access to all the info users give to FB is like insider-trading. They know very well what is trending, what is growing and what is going nowhere. The main difference is that Metaverse is something the want to build from scratch, not something that already exists like Insta and WhatsApp, so they don't have that insider-trading info.
mrkramer 5y ago
>To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end. >And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did. That's a fallacy. It doesn't matter if Zuck had 2 consecutive successful predictions because his 3rd can be unsuccessful. Each event(situation) is specific and different.

koonsolo 5y ago

I agree that Facebook and Zuch can't be that stupid. But for me, I can't see this working. There is no VR game that really killed it. I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. So it's not a "idiots!", but more of a "what am I missing here?". Will be interesting to see this play out

rblatz 5y ago
I've got a group of 6 of us that play Echo Arena on the Quest 2 about 3 hours every week. Beat saber is also a fun game, but does get a bit stale for most people after a couple weeks. None of these are VR's Halo, but it seems that VR is getting out of the tech demo/hobbyist space and into a broader market appeal. If facebook keeps iterating and pushing out quality improvements at the current price point it's just a matter of time.
T-A 5y ago
> I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. Roblox has more than 200 million daily active users; 67% of them are under 16 [1]. Where will they go when hormones hit and blocky avatars no longer seem all that compelling? [1] https://backlinko.com/roblox-users https://backlinko.com/roblox-users
- JetSpiegel 5y ago
  > Where will they go when hormones hit and blocky avatars no longer seem all that compelling? To college, where actual humans will be available for porking at all hours. If this Meta thing is a success, there might not be a following generation.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  My kid plays Roblox. We have all kinds of devices here: xbox, Pc, tablet and mobile phones. Guess where he plays it on... yeah, on his mobile phone. And how he communicates with his friends, no video, no calls, but just chat text. I honestly don't see this generation move to intense communication/experience, when they now prefer the most casual tech.

brap 5y ago

IG and WA were already wildly popular on a global scale when they were bought, though. People clearly wanted those. Is anyone on board with this “metaverse” thing outside of SV? To me this seems less like the IG and WA acquisitions, and more like the much hyped Facebook Phone and Facebook Home projects (RIP).

micromacrofoot 5y ago
I think it's even worse... does anyone outside of Facebook and the press take their Metaverse demos seriously? Everyone I know and work with universally thinks they're a joke. They've spent how much money on this janky uncanny nonsense? You'd think they'd at least stumble into one redeeming quality, but it escapes them.
- Grakel 5y ago
  I think a version of the meta verse will arise eventually, but when have you ever known a major innovation to come from a tech company that is already huge in a relatively unrelated area? They just get bogged down and start eating themselves.
  - delecti 5y ago
    I don't think this is that unrelated. There are certainly plenty of examples of things about this related to a company's primary focus. There are several Amazon products that are pretty huge since they started as just "books" (Echo, Kindle, AWS), Netflix streaming after DVDs, the entire ecosystem of iOS devices after starting with Macs.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > when have you ever known a major innovation to come from a tech company that is already huge in a relatively unrelated area? Xerox (modern computer), AT&T (Unix), Sony (PlayStation), Google (Maps, GMail), Apple (iPhone), Amazon (AWS)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vmception 5y ago

Zuck and The Book have a lot of dumb, cringeworthy, failed initiatives that have nothing to do with those surprisingly high valued acquisitions a decade ago.

lovecg 5y ago

Also reminds me of all the skepticism surrounding the iPhone launch. I remember those joke ad spoofs making fun of the actual phone feature. Yet here we are and who uses actual voice calls anymore?

wpietri 5y ago

They were great acquisitions because Facebook failed to compete in those markets. Facebook continues to fail to compete in the youth market. I don't think failing to innovate and then buying your way out of the hole is a sign of particular acumen. And they're still failing to innovate. Facebook now will be "retooling" toward "serving young adults the north star, rather than optimizing for older people." https://twitter.com/sarafischer/status/1452744573084708869 https://twitter.com/sarafischer/status/1452744573084708869 In practice what this means is that they have the same problem they did before, but antitrust scrutiny means they can't buy their way out of it this time.

tubby12345 5y ago
>I don't think failing to innovate and then buying your way out of the hole is a sign of particular acumen. I mean this is classic moving of goals posts - the only measure of acumen the CEO of a publically traded company is that little number called the share price. whether he buoys that number by brain-genius innovations or by brain-genius acquisitions, he's still demonstrating brain-genius business acumen (the proof of this seemingly tautological claim is that there are plenty of other companies that have failed to acquire their way out of irrelevance).
- wpietri 5y ago
  Not at all. I consider this in particular deeply incorrect: "only measure of acumen the CEO of a publicly traded company is that little number called the share price". And I'm hardly alone here. Indeed, the whole reason Facebook is in public doghouse right now is Zuckerberg's focus on dominance and profit without regard to little externalities like genocide. So you may have different goalposts for him, but that doesn't mean I've moved anything. If I'm trying to understand somebody's acumen, I want to see what they can do on their own. As someone else pointed out, Zuckerberg didn't even really have the one idea that he successfully exploited. He's rich, sure, but, "He's so rich that he must be a genius" is pretty far from my criteria for genius.
  - tubby12345 5y ago

noncoml 5y ago

> the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened Don't want to downplay it, but having access to all the info users give to FB is like insider-trading. They know very well what is trending, what is growing and what is going nowhere. The main difference is that Metaverse is something the want to build from scratch, not something that already exists like Insta and WhatsApp, so they don't have that insider-trading info.

mrkramer 5y ago

>To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end. >And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did. That's a fallacy. It doesn't matter if Zuck had 2 consecutive successful predictions because his 3rd can be unsuccessful. Each event(situation) is specific and different.