9 ms·

Zuckerberg wants to be the hero of the metaverse because Facebook is boring

60 points by samizdis 5y ago

bad_username 5y ago
As much as I hate facebook, I do not think this media war against it is organic.
SadWebDeveloper 5y ago
Everytime someone mentions VR, i got reminded of the same scene of hbo silicon valley sitcom on why VR tech won't work unless there is a significant breakthrough: It needs a 1000 usd dollars rig to run smoothly plus the VR equipment. What facebook is doing is preparing for the inevitable... they are going to break his company for monopoly reasons, therefore he needs zuckerberg to be seen as the CEO of something else, kinda what google does with alphabet were the founders basically run alphabet and have someone else run google in case they need a someone to put the blame on why "google shows first the image of trump when searching for idiot".
- dkarp 5y ago
  Except Oculus Quest 2 is $299.00, runs smoothly and requires no rig at all
  - SadWebDeveloper 5y ago
    299 for the basic module without battery packs that raises the costo to 400 and at reatail prices for the USA, outside the USA is hitting the 400 usd without the battery packs... it's still a really expensive device, the "metaverse" is going to be for the rich kids.
    - dkarp 5y ago
      You don't need the elite strap or battery packs, they really are optional and not "optional" but necessary. $299 is cheaper than most phones or consoles. It's far from $1000 rig + VR equipment. Are phones and consoles only for rich kids too? What you can get for $299 right now is a pretty incredible experience and unthinkable 3-4 years ago. It also seems likely that VR equipment will remain subsidised like consoles are, with the cost in games/apps/content.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
It's hard for me to imagine FB succeeding at this. Yes they might be able to build out the technology, but as John Carmack implied yesterday [0], the two killer apps for shared reality are "Adult Entertainment"--which FB will never do--and business meetings. What business is going to let Facebook be the intermediary of its private internal communications? It would be hard to imagine even if FB was a relatively trusted company, but at the moment FB ranks somewhere between used car dealers and payday loan companies on the public trust scale. The good news about this announcement is it gives other -- more competent and trustworthy -- companies permission to begin to work on a real metaverse. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032872
zahma 5y ago
I don't doubt that virtual reality or some combination of virtual and augmented will arise, but I just don't see this strategy as a viable short-term escape. I'm also uninterested in the future virtual reality that Meta seeks when the price that Facebook and Instagram have cost us right now. I credit the vision even if it repulses me. It's natural to imagine immersive content or at least digital overlays. That's a big vision and long term. The thing is, as an escape-hatch, it is too long-term. I don't expect to see any of these kinds of technologies dominating social spaces or commercial spaces for years to come. They're wonky, niche, and incoherent. It's also too unrealistic to awe critics enough to divert the public's attention away from Facebook/Meta's missteps. I'm sure the tech's viability and popularity will change with the state of the art and with generational shifts and preferences. For now, I'm eagerly awaiting for Facebook/Meta to answer for the cesspools they've allowed to fester and the intrusions on basic privacy.
fspacef 5y ago
Quite a well written article, that might prove to be prescient. The authors point that the entire Valley needs a “big new idea” to rally around rings true. He also snides Facebook well that they are really not the best suited company to create an enjoyable online place. However I am not willing to be against Mark Zuckerburg. 2022 is going to be an interesting for sure.
guscost 5y ago
Maybe they’re just expecting to get trust busted and turned into a utility, like AT&T?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I wish ATT was a utility. Maybe then, the payments for my mobile phone would not have gone towards purchasing a dying business like DirecTV, or Time Warner Media, or funded racist television channels radicalizing my countrymen. Imagine all that funding going towards rolling out fiber to the home and making mobile networks better.
someonewhocar3s 5y ago
To be 'meta' rather than 'social' is an improvement. Zuckerberg presents sometimes as suddenly widly ambitious, whilst so far maintaining the wide eyed - nobody knows who I'm supposed to be. God of personals sharing? Master of your wall of little notes? This may prequel taking a more active stance in what Facebook means, and how it (supposedly) relates.
nicoburns 5y ago
For me these kind of ridiculous projects from both Facebook and Google are the prime evidence that we ought to be taxing these companies more. They're essentially circumventing market mechanisms (which would require a whole lot more people than just Zuckerberg to think that such a project was a good idea) and wasting a bunch of resources because they've been overcompensated for their other successful projects.
- dageshi 5y ago
  Perhaps you could tell us which business ideas and scientific theories will be correct so none of us have to waste any money on ridiculous projects?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    The idea is to distribute resources so that we get more experiments. Many of them will be ridiculous projects, but some of them most likely won't be. We don't get that when all the resources are concentrated in a single project like this.
    - dageshi 5y ago
      There's no lack of VC spending on startups in this world, some of them are quite ridiculous. I'm not sure what you would propose would make any difference to anything.
      - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
        If anything, there's a oversupply of VC money right now. You can get funding for incredibly whacky ideas. There's just not enough good ideas for the amount of money available, so it's sloshing into anything and everything.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > because they've been overcompensated How is this determined? Are market mechanisms not working in stock trading either? Seems like they are delivering decent profit numbers for their investors, compared to other companies.
neither_color 5y ago
it may be true, as David Karpf wrote in Wired, that historically, “metaverse” technologies like VR have been “the rich white kid of technology”—continually failing and yet being granted opportunity after opportunity to succeed. Same, to a lesser extent, with AR, which Google famously tried to make happen with its Glass and was laughed out of the room 10 years ago. Snapchat’s glasses barely made a blip, and the dustbin of technology past is littered with failed VR headsets. One thing the author is leaving out is that Oculus headsets ARE successful and the industry is iterating quite nicely. Quest 2 does NOT have a competitor with its feature set at its price point, I wish it did because Id buy it in a heartbeat; but it doesnt. You can argue that its not ubiquitous enough yet but it is growing, the headsets are getting more comfortable and coming out with more features. Since I got the quest new features have been continuously released through software updates, including a bump from 90hz to 120hz refresh rate, and native desktop PCVR wireless streaming that made tethering obsolete. I can play AAA titles like Flight Simulator 2020 and Half Life Alyx wirelessly, do some moderately intense cardio with boxing and fitness apps, and work comfortably for an hour or two with giant virtual desktop screens. It's certainly not a stagnant field, just not mainstream yet.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Quest 2 isn't successful the way Meta wants it to be. There's been like what, 2 million units sold? Facebook has nearly 2 billion MAU. 2 million is nothing. Let's compare to other electronics that are arguably "mainstream": Nintendo Wii - 101 million Nintendo DS - 154 million Sony PS4 - 116 million Apple iPhone 12 - 100 million Apple AirPods - over 100 million in 2021
  - josefresco 5y ago
    Comparing hardware, with a fixed cost of about $300 to a free online service isn't exactly a valid comparison. $600 million from 2 million customers (not including $ spent on games). How much money does FB make from 2 million FB users?
    - badlogic 5y ago
cm2012 5y ago
Wow, 1000s of words and completely missed the point. Facebook largely relies on 3rd parties to run their business. Without Apple and Google phone access, they are dead in the water. If they made a fundamentally killer new physical device, they would own it end to end and remove a whole risk category from their business. That's why Mark is investing $10b a year in VR R&D.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Even if they had a new killer device, unless it's as a small as a phone and has cellular functionality it will compete with phones for space in a pocket, bag or purse. Either way, it will be destroyed by the intense phone competition. Look at the Gameboy/DS/3DS/PSP/Vita. By far the most popular set of non-phone handheld devices in existence. Obliterated by phones. Together all of Nintendo's and Sony's handhelds have probably sold over a billion, several orders of magnitude more than all VR devices combined and in 2 generations they were wiped out. The only way Meta can win here is if there's some sort of neural link that completely surpasses phones. I don't bet on it.
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    That's not how I read the situation. I could see this as being more like how mobile phones are exceeding desktop/laptop computers in usage. Sure a phone is small, but a lightweight pair of hands-free glasses can be even more convenient with a larger than hand-sized display. It's only hard to believe now because the tech is in about the PalmPilot phase.
  - after_care 5y ago
    It doesn’t really matter where the user uses the Oculus, it matters how much users use the oculus. It can find success outside of the pocket. Look at cable TV advertising.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Meta's current valuation cannot be justified by some small niche. Love the Cable TV advertising example - Meta killed that.
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
I see this as a huge declaration of war. Apple has been pushing in this area silently for years now with their industry leading LiDAR miniaturization and AR kit being used by many devs to actually ship augmented experiences. While , here we have the CEO of Facebook coming out with an “Imagine . . “ line on half baked hardware and badly rendered experiences in a live stream. I’m going to love watching Apple take a sledgehammer to these pipe dreams
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lalos 5y ago
  It also felt to me like vaporware, just a bunch of promises and no product or no real announcement. Apple on the other side is just quiet and opens up once it has something to sell. Then again FB is an ad company so this is what they know best, marketing.
  - DisjointedHunt 5y ago
    Hahah, precisely. "Imagine, you put on your headset and are in your home space" . . i cringed so hard. I've been very critical of Apple on here, but i take my hat off to their dedication in shipping technology that no other company comes close to be able to ship. Globally, at consistent quality. Outside of the US, buying an Xbox sucks, buying any hardware from Google or Facebook is a gamble (I tried, portal and Chromecast from official stores for relatives) and Apple is the only company that seems to delight. I hated the keynote from Facebook yesterday, i can't believe they had the arrogance to think anyone outside of their offices would give a fuck about their fantasies and that there was ZERO substance.
malikNF 5y ago
I was a bit surprised why they used zukerburg to make the announcement in the first place. Fb is seen as a very creepy company. The amount of memes calling zukerburg a creep and the amount of jokes I have seen in the past few hours is astounding. If fb did meta as a separate company/project and not directly linked to zukerburg and maybe had fb as a partner company they would have made this whole thing feel less silly and less creepy.
- pupppet 5y ago
  Mark wants to make it clear this is his universe. He read Ready Player One and decided playing a virtual god would be fun.
- samizdis 5y ago
  I am not really sure whether there is any way, given Facebook's corporate structure and investor/shareholder voice/power, that Zuckerburg could be overruled. The final decision, I think, is entirely his - albeit that he was probably advised by the top people around him. Given that, then this seems to me that his passion for this is strong enough to overcome any reservations he or anyone around him might have. He's not dumb, and he surely knows what's what re current PR and image problems etc, so this looks (to me) like an expression of belief in what his vision is for the future.
- MrPatan 5y ago
  > the amount of jokes I have seen Mark hasn't seen them.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  Steve Jobs laid a trap for tech ceo egos with his presentations. He was very good at it, and other tech ceos want to imagine they're good at it too. They aren't, not even his handpicked successor. They'd all be better served by turning it over to professionals, but they have to do it themselves. The thing that puzzled me about the Meta presentation was that Zuckerburg could hire the best hair and makeup people in the world to at least help him look less creepy, but he doesn't. There's really no excuse for that. The look hurts his goals, but he sticks with it.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
I don't think the tech is ready for a metaverse. It's hard to capture the attention of youth. The device hardware is somewhat high, it's not something you can carry in your pocket or use on the go. The software is gimmicky. It requires physical space. Although it can be used in a network it's not easy to do it with other people physically present, and is thus somewhat antisocial in a way. I'm also constantly amused that nobody mentions that one thing that snow crash explicitly identified as the key for the technology to take off. High fidelity facial capture. The book made a big deal about this. I think it was an astute thing. I don't think VR chat meets the bar.
- someperson 5y ago
  On "high fidelity facial capture", are you familiar with Facebook's impressive codec avatar research? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvqQDTpGZ4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvqQDTpGZ4c
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    That's nice. Can you use it?
xor99 5y ago
This comes just a few weeks after fb were shown not to be able to implement door access badges to their own buildings in a safe and secure way. Why would I ever trust a company like fb with hardware in my home/interacting with devices?
- xor99 5y ago
  Downvoted but if it was a smaller startup trying to do something related to hardware they would be shorted to hell & back + would be the running joke of the year. "X is trying to sell secure VR headsets but they can't even work a security pass on their own building" and so on. See thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28750894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28750894
Lamad123 5y ago
Zuckerspy wants to follow your ass in all verses!
0898 5y ago
Question for greybeards – would something like LambdaMOO nowadays be described as a metaverse?
- cbtacy 5y ago
  Ahhh.... LambdaMOO! You're taking me back. I'd say no. It doesn't include the spatial computing aspects. You can say it was a precursor to the metaverse, but by the earliest definitions (Snowcrash et al), the metaverse has to be a replacement for the reality around you which encompasses all your senses.
  - 0898 5y ago
    Thanks. To challenge that a little, MUDS certainly felt pretty real. Somebody wrote a book about a rape in LambdaMOO. [My Tiny Life.] I'm still confused about what's a metaverse and what's something like Second Life.
Lamad123 5y ago
Omnizuck will hunt you down in other universes
jjoonathan 5y ago
I wonder who will win. The big players all have special strengths, but which one will wind up being most important? * Google -- interior navigation * Facebook -- face recognition, posts * Apple -- style and cool factor That said, the obnoxious complaining attitude of the article reeeally grates on my ears. Lots of companies are trying very hard -- on their own dime -- to make this happen, knowing that most of them will almost certainly fail, and this guy wants to whine about it? What an ass. Technology clunks until it doesn't. That's just how progress works. The same article could have been written about any of the last big technologies before they were mature: personal computers, the internet, smart phones, social networks. Nobody knows if or when AR will click, and the only thing to do is keep trying. Also, he could have done without making it a race thing.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Are Google and Apple real players in VR? I thought it was FB via Oculus and Microsoft.
- skellera 5y ago
  Apple has the best consumer hardware design in the industry. If one of the big tech companies are going to crack the hardware issues (arguably the most important part), it’s going to probably be Apple. It’s a game of who can make the smallest form factor with the best performance without looking like shit. Pretty sure Apple is in the best position to win that. The software for all the other stuff you mentioned will follow the winner of the hardware. But yeah, the article is pretty weak. People keep trying because AR/VR is going to be massive if the hardware is solved. Being the gateway to a person’s entire world (AR) or the next major media and productivity tools (VR) will make you one of the most powerful companies in the world.
- after_care 5y ago
  It’s always been a race. Look at Windows phone to see what happens when you come late.
  - aikinai 5y ago
    I don’t think GP is referring to the “race” to VR, but the fact that the article tried to insult VR by calling it a white person.
DemiGuru 5y ago
MZ is attempting to ensure higher engagement with the users. Currently FB engagement is relegated to said user's spare time. The goal is to ensure that while on FB or in the metaverse if you will. The user is fully immersed and can "exist" there without any middle people. Squeezing out maximum engagement. FB's version of "The Matrix" with almost everything it implies.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
We Americans sometimes forget we are 3% off the world. FB is so huge, and the hand wringing by a small community in America might not be a big deal in the scheme of things.
malwrar 5y ago
I guess we’ll see if zuckerberg can lure enough people into his next digital fiefdom for it to have staying power. Hardware control seems to be the big money move, especially as advertising is looking less like a money firehose as governments start to catch on to how dangerous it is. A theory I’ve been entertaining is that he’s chosen to execute now in response to Apple & Google’s centralized control over hardware, which was directly and explicitly used to attack facebook’s sole means of funding itself. If this metaverse bullshit catches on, zuck will have unaccountable control over his users eyeballs, software distribution and competition, and who knows maybe even the industry standard 30% tax. Here’s hoping the antitrust crowd is watching closely. I wonder if that’s why they’re investing mostly in the EU for their workforce vs the US (EU very much wants to be a tech rival to the US after all).

60 points by samizdis 5y ago

As much as I hate facebook, I do not think this media war against it is organic.

Everytime someone mentions VR, i got reminded of the same scene of hbo silicon valley sitcom on why VR tech won't work unless there is a significant breakthrough: It needs a 1000 usd dollars rig to run smoothly plus the VR equipment. What facebook is doing is preparing for the inevitable... they are going to break his company for monopoly reasons, therefore he needs zuckerberg to be seen as the CEO of something else, kinda what google does with alphabet were the founders basically run alphabet and have someone else run google in case they need a someone to put the blame on why "google shows first the image of trump when searching for idiot".

dkarp 5y ago
Except Oculus Quest 2 is $299.00, runs smoothly and requires no rig at all
- SadWebDeveloper 5y ago
  299 for the basic module without battery packs that raises the costo to 400 and at reatail prices for the USA, outside the USA is hitting the 400 usd without the battery packs... it's still a really expensive device, the "metaverse" is going to be for the rich kids.
  - dkarp 5y ago
    You don't need the elite strap or battery packs, they really are optional and not "optional" but necessary. $299 is cheaper than most phones or consoles. It's far from $1000 rig + VR equipment. Are phones and consoles only for rich kids too? What you can get for $299 right now is a pretty incredible experience and unthinkable 3-4 years ago. It also seems likely that VR equipment will remain subsidised like consoles are, with the cost in games/apps/content.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

It's hard for me to imagine FB succeeding at this. Yes they might be able to build out the technology, but as John Carmack implied yesterday [0], the two killer apps for shared reality are "Adult Entertainment"--which FB will never do--and business meetings. What business is going to let Facebook be the intermediary of its private internal communications? It would be hard to imagine even if FB was a relatively trusted company, but at the moment FB ranks somewhere between used car dealers and payday loan companies on the public trust scale. The good news about this announcement is it gives other -- more competent and trustworthy -- companies permission to begin to work on a real metaverse. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032872

zahma 5y ago

I don't doubt that virtual reality or some combination of virtual and augmented will arise, but I just don't see this strategy as a viable short-term escape. I'm also uninterested in the future virtual reality that Meta seeks when the price that Facebook and Instagram have cost us right now. I credit the vision even if it repulses me. It's natural to imagine immersive content or at least digital overlays. That's a big vision and long term. The thing is, as an escape-hatch, it is too long-term. I don't expect to see any of these kinds of technologies dominating social spaces or commercial spaces for years to come. They're wonky, niche, and incoherent. It's also too unrealistic to awe critics enough to divert the public's attention away from Facebook/Meta's missteps. I'm sure the tech's viability and popularity will change with the state of the art and with generational shifts and preferences. For now, I'm eagerly awaiting for Facebook/Meta to answer for the cesspools they've allowed to fester and the intrusions on basic privacy.

fspacef 5y ago

Quite a well written article, that might prove to be prescient. The authors point that the entire Valley needs a “big new idea” to rally around rings true. He also snides Facebook well that they are really not the best suited company to create an enjoyable online place. However I am not willing to be against Mark Zuckerburg. 2022 is going to be an interesting for sure.

guscost 5y ago

Maybe they’re just expecting to get trust busted and turned into a utility, like AT&T?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I wish ATT was a utility. Maybe then, the payments for my mobile phone would not have gone towards purchasing a dying business like DirecTV, or Time Warner Media, or funded racist television channels radicalizing my countrymen. Imagine all that funding going towards rolling out fiber to the home and making mobile networks better.

someonewhocar3s 5y ago

To be 'meta' rather than 'social' is an improvement. Zuckerberg presents sometimes as suddenly widly ambitious, whilst so far maintaining the wide eyed - nobody knows who I'm supposed to be. God of personals sharing? Master of your wall of little notes? This may prequel taking a more active stance in what Facebook means, and how it (supposedly) relates.

nicoburns 5y ago

For me these kind of ridiculous projects from both Facebook and Google are the prime evidence that we ought to be taxing these companies more. They're essentially circumventing market mechanisms (which would require a whole lot more people than just Zuckerberg to think that such a project was a good idea) and wasting a bunch of resources because they've been overcompensated for their other successful projects.

dageshi 5y ago
Perhaps you could tell us which business ideas and scientific theories will be correct so none of us have to waste any money on ridiculous projects?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  The idea is to distribute resources so that we get more experiments. Many of them will be ridiculous projects, but some of them most likely won't be. We don't get that when all the resources are concentrated in a single project like this.
  - dageshi 5y ago
    There's no lack of VC spending on startups in this world, some of them are quite ridiculous. I'm not sure what you would propose would make any difference to anything.
    - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
      If anything, there's a oversupply of VC money right now. You can get funding for incredibly whacky ideas. There's just not enough good ideas for the amount of money available, so it's sloshing into anything and everything.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> because they've been overcompensated How is this determined? Are market mechanisms not working in stock trading either? Seems like they are delivering decent profit numbers for their investors, compared to other companies.

neither_color 5y ago

it may be true, as David Karpf wrote in Wired, that historically, “metaverse” technologies like VR have been “the rich white kid of technology”—continually failing and yet being granted opportunity after opportunity to succeed. Same, to a lesser extent, with AR, which Google famously tried to make happen with its Glass and was laughed out of the room 10 years ago. Snapchat’s glasses barely made a blip, and the dustbin of technology past is littered with failed VR headsets. One thing the author is leaving out is that Oculus headsets ARE successful and the industry is iterating quite nicely. Quest 2 does NOT have a competitor with its feature set at its price point, I wish it did because Id buy it in a heartbeat; but it doesnt. You can argue that its not ubiquitous enough yet but it is growing, the headsets are getting more comfortable and coming out with more features. Since I got the quest new features have been continuously released through software updates, including a bump from 90hz to 120hz refresh rate, and native desktop PCVR wireless streaming that made tethering obsolete. I can play AAA titles like Flight Simulator 2020 and Half Life Alyx wirelessly, do some moderately intense cardio with boxing and fitness apps, and work comfortably for an hour or two with giant virtual desktop screens. It's certainly not a stagnant field, just not mainstream yet.

endisneigh 5y ago
Quest 2 isn't successful the way Meta wants it to be. There's been like what, 2 million units sold? Facebook has nearly 2 billion MAU. 2 million is nothing. Let's compare to other electronics that are arguably "mainstream": Nintendo Wii - 101 million Nintendo DS - 154 million Sony PS4 - 116 million Apple iPhone 12 - 100 million Apple AirPods - over 100 million in 2021
- josefresco 5y ago
  Comparing hardware, with a fixed cost of about $300 to a free online service isn't exactly a valid comparison. $600 million from 2 million customers (not including $ spent on games). How much money does FB make from 2 million FB users?
  - badlogic 5y ago

cm2012 5y ago

Wow, 1000s of words and completely missed the point. Facebook largely relies on 3rd parties to run their business. Without Apple and Google phone access, they are dead in the water. If they made a fundamentally killer new physical device, they would own it end to end and remove a whole risk category from their business. That's why Mark is investing $10b a year in VR R&D.

endisneigh 5y ago
Even if they had a new killer device, unless it's as a small as a phone and has cellular functionality it will compete with phones for space in a pocket, bag or purse. Either way, it will be destroyed by the intense phone competition. Look at the Gameboy/DS/3DS/PSP/Vita. By far the most popular set of non-phone handheld devices in existence. Obliterated by phones. Together all of Nintendo's and Sony's handhelds have probably sold over a billion, several orders of magnitude more than all VR devices combined and in 2 generations they were wiped out. The only way Meta can win here is if there's some sort of neural link that completely surpasses phones. I don't bet on it.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  That's not how I read the situation. I could see this as being more like how mobile phones are exceeding desktop/laptop computers in usage. Sure a phone is small, but a lightweight pair of hands-free glasses can be even more convenient with a larger than hand-sized display. It's only hard to believe now because the tech is in about the PalmPilot phase.
- after_care 5y ago
  It doesn’t really matter where the user uses the Oculus, it matters how much users use the oculus. It can find success outside of the pocket. Look at cable TV advertising.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    Meta's current valuation cannot be justified by some small niche. Love the Cable TV advertising example - Meta killed that.

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

I see this as a huge declaration of war. Apple has been pushing in this area silently for years now with their industry leading LiDAR miniaturization and AR kit being used by many devs to actually ship augmented experiences. While , here we have the CEO of Facebook coming out with an “Imagine . . “ line on half baked hardware and badly rendered experiences in a live stream. I’m going to love watching Apple take a sledgehammer to these pipe dreams

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lalos 5y ago
It also felt to me like vaporware, just a bunch of promises and no product or no real announcement. Apple on the other side is just quiet and opens up once it has something to sell. Then again FB is an ad company so this is what they know best, marketing.
- DisjointedHunt 5y ago
  Hahah, precisely. "Imagine, you put on your headset and are in your home space" . . i cringed so hard. I've been very critical of Apple on here, but i take my hat off to their dedication in shipping technology that no other company comes close to be able to ship. Globally, at consistent quality. Outside of the US, buying an Xbox sucks, buying any hardware from Google or Facebook is a gamble (I tried, portal and Chromecast from official stores for relatives) and Apple is the only company that seems to delight. I hated the keynote from Facebook yesterday, i can't believe they had the arrogance to think anyone outside of their offices would give a fuck about their fantasies and that there was ZERO substance.

malikNF 5y ago

I was a bit surprised why they used zukerburg to make the announcement in the first place. Fb is seen as a very creepy company. The amount of memes calling zukerburg a creep and the amount of jokes I have seen in the past few hours is astounding. If fb did meta as a separate company/project and not directly linked to zukerburg and maybe had fb as a partner company they would have made this whole thing feel less silly and less creepy.

pupppet 5y ago
Mark wants to make it clear this is his universe. He read Ready Player One and decided playing a virtual god would be fun.
samizdis 5y ago
I am not really sure whether there is any way, given Facebook's corporate structure and investor/shareholder voice/power, that Zuckerburg could be overruled. The final decision, I think, is entirely his - albeit that he was probably advised by the top people around him. Given that, then this seems to me that his passion for this is strong enough to overcome any reservations he or anyone around him might have. He's not dumb, and he surely knows what's what re current PR and image problems etc, so this looks (to me) like an expression of belief in what his vision is for the future.
MrPatan 5y ago
> the amount of jokes I have seen Mark hasn't seen them.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
Steve Jobs laid a trap for tech ceo egos with his presentations. He was very good at it, and other tech ceos want to imagine they're good at it too. They aren't, not even his handpicked successor. They'd all be better served by turning it over to professionals, but they have to do it themselves. The thing that puzzled me about the Meta presentation was that Zuckerburg could hire the best hair and makeup people in the world to at least help him look less creepy, but he doesn't. There's really no excuse for that. The look hurts his goals, but he sticks with it.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

I don't think the tech is ready for a metaverse. It's hard to capture the attention of youth. The device hardware is somewhat high, it's not something you can carry in your pocket or use on the go. The software is gimmicky. It requires physical space. Although it can be used in a network it's not easy to do it with other people physically present, and is thus somewhat antisocial in a way. I'm also constantly amused that nobody mentions that one thing that snow crash explicitly identified as the key for the technology to take off. High fidelity facial capture. The book made a big deal about this. I think it was an astute thing. I don't think VR chat meets the bar.

someperson 5y ago
On "high fidelity facial capture", are you familiar with Facebook's impressive codec avatar research? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvqQDTpGZ4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvqQDTpGZ4c
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  That's nice. Can you use it?

xor99 5y ago

This comes just a few weeks after fb were shown not to be able to implement door access badges to their own buildings in a safe and secure way. Why would I ever trust a company like fb with hardware in my home/interacting with devices?

xor99 5y ago
Downvoted but if it was a smaller startup trying to do something related to hardware they would be shorted to hell & back + would be the running joke of the year. "X is trying to sell secure VR headsets but they can't even work a security pass on their own building" and so on. See thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28750894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28750894

Lamad123 5y ago

Zuckerspy wants to follow your ass in all verses!

0898 5y ago

Question for greybeards – would something like LambdaMOO nowadays be described as a metaverse?

cbtacy 5y ago
Ahhh.... LambdaMOO! You're taking me back. I'd say no. It doesn't include the spatial computing aspects. You can say it was a precursor to the metaverse, but by the earliest definitions (Snowcrash et al), the metaverse has to be a replacement for the reality around you which encompasses all your senses.
- 0898 5y ago
  Thanks. To challenge that a little, MUDS certainly felt pretty real. Somebody wrote a book about a rape in LambdaMOO. [My Tiny Life.] I'm still confused about what's a metaverse and what's something like Second Life.

Lamad123 5y ago

Omnizuck will hunt you down in other universes

jjoonathan 5y ago

I wonder who will win. The big players all have special strengths, but which one will wind up being most important? * Google -- interior navigation * Facebook -- face recognition, posts * Apple -- style and cool factor That said, the obnoxious complaining attitude of the article reeeally grates on my ears. Lots of companies are trying very hard -- on their own dime -- to make this happen, knowing that most of them will almost certainly fail, and this guy wants to whine about it? What an ass. Technology clunks until it doesn't. That's just how progress works. The same article could have been written about any of the last big technologies before they were mature: personal computers, the internet, smart phones, social networks. Nobody knows if or when AR will click, and the only thing to do is keep trying. Also, he could have done without making it a race thing.

lostmsu 5y ago
Are Google and Apple real players in VR? I thought it was FB via Oculus and Microsoft.
skellera 5y ago
Apple has the best consumer hardware design in the industry. If one of the big tech companies are going to crack the hardware issues (arguably the most important part), it’s going to probably be Apple. It’s a game of who can make the smallest form factor with the best performance without looking like shit. Pretty sure Apple is in the best position to win that. The software for all the other stuff you mentioned will follow the winner of the hardware. But yeah, the article is pretty weak. People keep trying because AR/VR is going to be massive if the hardware is solved. Being the gateway to a person’s entire world (AR) or the next major media and productivity tools (VR) will make you one of the most powerful companies in the world.
after_care 5y ago
It’s always been a race. Look at Windows phone to see what happens when you come late.
- aikinai 5y ago
  I don’t think GP is referring to the “race” to VR, but the fact that the article tried to insult VR by calling it a white person.

DemiGuru 5y ago

MZ is attempting to ensure higher engagement with the users. Currently FB engagement is relegated to said user's spare time. The goal is to ensure that while on FB or in the metaverse if you will. The user is fully immersed and can "exist" there without any middle people. Squeezing out maximum engagement. FB's version of "The Matrix" with almost everything it implies.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

We Americans sometimes forget we are 3% off the world. FB is so huge, and the hand wringing by a small community in America might not be a big deal in the scheme of things.

malwrar 5y ago

I guess we’ll see if zuckerberg can lure enough people into his next digital fiefdom for it to have staying power. Hardware control seems to be the big money move, especially as advertising is looking less like a money firehose as governments start to catch on to how dangerous it is. A theory I’ve been entertaining is that he’s chosen to execute now in response to Apple & Google’s centralized control over hardware, which was directly and explicitly used to attack facebook’s sole means of funding itself. If this metaverse bullshit catches on, zuck will have unaccountable control over his users eyeballs, software distribution and competition, and who knows maybe even the industry standard 30% tax. Here’s hoping the antitrust crowd is watching closely. I wonder if that’s why they’re investing mostly in the EU for their workforce vs the US (EU very much wants to be a tech rival to the US after all).