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Lies. Don’t you all see it? Facebook has been declining over the past year and this is a convenient way to blame someone - anyone. Let’s face it, what are you

Lies. Don’t you all see it? Facebook has been declining over the past year and this is a convenient way to blame someone - anyone. Let’s face it, what are your friends all using now? That’s right - video - YouTube and TikTok. Facebook had no answer for video and thus lost a lot of eyeballs. Instagram is a poor clone of TikTok and most people just repost their popular TikTok videos on Instagram reels anyway - hardly any original videos show up there. As the world transitions to short form video even YouTube is going to feel the pinch. Don’t you notice every one of your favorite content creators starting “clip” channels which are blowing up with YouTube shorts and reposts to TikTok? Facebook is beginning its long inevitable decline. Who knows if it will accelerate or just be a slow death? And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse and so he’s trying to make Facebook be the epicenter of it. Who knows if it will work. But this has nothing if anything to do with Apple. And everything to do with the long term trends of history… or if you will, psychohistory.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
krono 5y ago
Yes to everything, but what even is a metaverse? I still have no idea.
- rgbrenner 5y ago
  It's the same thing the marvelverse is... a way of referring to all of facebook's products. They're just trying to generate some hype and make their products look more forward thinking.. even though they're exactly the same as always.
  - sporkland 5y ago
    Metaverse is a concept originally popularized by Neal Stephenson in his book snowcrash. It's an online VR based world that is very cool and fun and most people spend there times there instead of the real world.
    - rgbrenner 5y ago
      It's a concept originally popularized in Snowcrash, that Facebook is attempting to latch on to as a marketing campaign to make their products seem future looking, but in reality havent changed one bit. To further this marketing effort, they created a VR chat that is a trash product that no one will ever use.
  - hallway_monitor 5y ago
    Wow, thank you for this insight. I despise them both.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  A giant bag of hopium
- tjpnz 5y ago
  VR chat with your Facebook friends.
jamil7 5y ago
> He knows the next frontier is the meta verse Agreed with everything in this comment up until that point.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I think it works if you: s/knows/hopes/
  - danrocks 5y ago
    /gi please
criddell 5y ago
If this isn't a lie and Apple flipping that switch cost Facebook $10bn, then that tells me my personal information is worth a lot. What I was getting from Facebook in exchange for my data was too little. I use Google a lot more than Facebook and frankly what I get from them in exchange for my data is probably also way too little. I wish there was some type of consumer union where we could negotiate with these companies as a block.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Not different??!
- airza 5y ago
  The concept you are describing is a government.
  - sfe22 5y ago
    Except the government is a monopoly with its own agenda. In addition it already kind of owns us (well a large percentage), what would it gain if it negotiated this deal for us? I would argue it can gain more power by making a deal with facebook.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      Digital direct democracy is a potential opportunity that has only become possible with ubiquitous computing devices (iPhones)
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - pnutjam 5y ago
duxup 5y ago
I don’t see a lot TikTok type video on any of the channels I watch on YouTube.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  I never said they repost to YouTube
  - zwirbl 5y ago
    The comment is not about repost, it's about the short video, and I also don't see much of it on yt
    - onlyfortoday2 5y ago
    - notriddle 5y ago
      The YouTube recommendation algorithm prefers longer videos than that. It is specifically trained to optimize for “watch minutes,” and longer videos seem more effective than extremely short ones.
      - ratww 5y ago
        Youtube has recently started recommending short videos too, varying from 10 sec to 1 min, but that depends on your viewing habits. They even have a "#shorts" feature to compete with TikTok.
- Jenk 5y ago
  Just fire up YT shorts. Nothing but content from TikTok.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I think I have seen that... I don't mind it in a way as I'd rather watch it on youtube than install the tiktok app. Granted I'm also not going out of my way to watch it so not a big win for YT.
samwillis 5y ago
While I agree with you that Facebook (the app) is in decline and Facebook/Meta are rushing to diversify as the market changes, the premise of the article that Apples change has significantly effected Facebooks revenues is not a lie. Apples change has fundamentally damaged ad conversion attribution from the Facebook/Instagram apps on iOS, we have seen it it ourselves. It may be that the exact figure of $10B is inflated, it could even be an underestimate. Meta may have an agenda in how they are spinning it, almost certainly do in fact. However I can assure you that the fundaments of the article and what they are saying is true.
- intrasight 5y ago
  Please correct me if I'm wrong. This privacy change only affects apps on iOS? I only use the facebook.com website. Ad tracking in that context hasn't changed?
  - tnel77 5y ago
    That’s true, but I’d guess that there are a lot of users that exclusively use the iOS app.
    - intrasight 5y ago
      Among my peers where I've observed how they use FB, I think it's an even split. For me, if there's a web site, I skip installing the app. And of course a majority of news and social and commerce web sites now prompt you to install the app.
      - samwillis 5y ago
        Personally when I occasionally use Facebook its via the app so that I am not logged in in by browser. Don't want them spying on everything I do online. Twitter on the other hand I use in the browser as I like to be able to open threads in tabs to come back to.
      - FearlessNebula 5y ago
codechad 5y ago
alephnan 5y ago
This seems like post-hoc confirmation of "I knew it! I told you guys so!" like people who claim a catastrophic recession is around the corner, quarter after next. If you have some special insight that the wider market doesn't and hasn't price in, then the odds and prices are asymmetrically tipped in your favor. As an example, I spent $13,580 shorting Facebook on Wednesday, which I haven't sold but will probably later today. Yesterday, those short contracts were worth north of $200k. I did it within a Roth IRA, too, which makes it even higher conviction. Truth is, it was a gamble. No one really knows. If you can truly predict where Facebook will be in 5 years, 2 years, even next quarter, you can be really rich.
- chillage 5y ago
  That seems a pretty smart short (in retrospect). I guess you were banking on them releasing concrete numbers on the iOS changes and people panicking from it? Seems really obvious in retrospect and relies on pretty common knowledge so I'm surprised that worked so straightforward. Good job.
  - alephnan 5y ago
    I've noticed they stopped showing ads from actual businesses. Instead, it was sponsored posts from individuals self-promoting for purely vain reasons as opposed to some commercial reason.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  I thought you could not short stocks in an Ira, only sell covered calls? Is there some way around this rule? https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/103114/roth-iras-investing-and-trading-dos-and-donts.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/10311...
  - gruez 5y ago
    options, maybe?
    - 5y ago
bko 5y ago
> Let’s face it, what are your friends all using now? That’s right - video - YouTube and TikTok. I don't think HN reader's friends are Facebooks growth market. You might be looking at a biased sample. This is their growth levels of the last 3 years. Quarter Year MAU Q Growth A growth Q4 2021 2.912 0.07% 4.11% Q3 2021 2.91 0.52% 6.20% Q2 2021 2.895 1.47% 7.22% Q1 2021 2.853 2.00% 9.60% Q4 2020 2.797 2.08% 11.97% Q3 2020 2.74 1.48% 11.88% Q2 2020 2.7 3.73% 11.85% Q1 2020 2.603 4.20% 9.60% Q4 2019 2.498 2.00% Q3 2019 2.449 1.45% Q2 2019 2.414 1.64% Q1 2019 2.375 https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
- jeromegv 5y ago
  Looking at something from 2 years ago in social media isn't really relevant, trends change FAST. This TikTok trend has taken over the world quite a bit over the last few months. Also, annual growth worldwide tends to hide one key things. It might mean Facebook is arriving in markets where internet penetration was poor (poor/slow data, etc..), however you have to look at their core market where advertisers spend money. In those markets, have they been gaining users? It's been said that they were losing eyeballs in core markets while expanding in markets that didn't bring much money. If they lose customers in their core market, that means the service has been going down from their saturation point instead of stabilizing. And a worldwide growth would hide this data.
cjbgkagh 5y ago
Facebook videos are super annoying. Simple bait stretched out just long enough to get ads in the middle. Even if a video looks interesting I have to first ask myself if it’s worth 2.5 minutes of fluff and a 10 second ad for only a few seconds of payoff. Facebook has incentivized this behavior to the point I now simply refuse to click on their videos.
ChildOfChaos 5y ago
"Don’t you notice every one of your favorite content creators@ NO! Because I don't care about stupid content creators. Facebook was never really about content creators, youtube and tiktok are all about that. It's a different thing. Not that I am a Facebook fan either but yes eyeballs are going to youtube and tiktok and other content creators but it's a different business and that is why Facebook is stuck versus these.
throwhauser 5y ago
I was with you up to here: > And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse Zuckerberg has been a surprisingly good steward of the one successful idea he came across, the social network graph. His acquisitions (Instagram, etc) worked very well to supplement the social network graph and keep it going longer than it otherwise might have gone. But now that no one gives a shit about what anyone else is doing and just wants to see some jokes, that graph is getting less and less complete. The "metaverse" is an idiotic, last-ditch attempt to lock people back into the grid by turning them into cartoon versions of themselves in a private-sector universe. It's ridiculous. Facebook is flailing.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  There's an element of having shot themselves in the foot. FB moviled from content driven purely by your friends and what they post to content that FB have decided to feed you. That worked great in a lot of senses. You never run out of content. FB have a lot more options for their optimisation efforts. It also made them more of a general media company. But... it also devalued the social network/friends aspect. Now it's just about content and holding user attention. Well... that means competition is everything again. Anyone can post anywhere, or consume content anywhere.
  - orbifold 5y ago
    Yeah, whenever I see others scrolling through content at Facebook, I can't help but wonder who would voluntarily subject themselves to so much garbage information. It is similar with Twitter, which I use for "science communication". But the amount of miscellaneous memes and low quality click bait ads that one has to endure is almost physically painful.
    - _1100 5y ago
      Isn't the short answer to "why are people subjecting themselves to this" just dark patterns? I know it sounds overly reductionist or boogeyman-esque, but they captured a market and refuse to let go, doing every single thing they can to keep and monetize human attention.
johnmato 5y ago
This is a good analysis of understand what's currently happening in the tech sphere.
ineedasername 5y ago
I don't think it's a (complete) lie. In the short term I think it is very much the truth: 2021 once again saw record revenue for them [0] so, absent a specific threat like Apple, there is no reason to project a $10B loss over expected revenue gains during the short 1-year term at issue during the call. On the other hand, Apple's actions are part of an overall trend that represents an existential threat, for the exact reasons you mention and others. The main issue is probably something like the innovators dilemma: they've become reactive, and slow in those reactions. Their largest successes in recent year haven't come from their own creations, but from acquisitions. NYT has a pretty good analysis of some of its systemic flaws [1] [0] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2022/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2021-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files...
outside1234 5y ago
Agreed - and the regular Facebook site is just awful now - my parents don’t even use it
lovehashbrowns 5y ago
YouTube already saw this with Vines, though. TikTok is just a thousand times better than Vine. But ultimately the access to long-form content is going to help YouTube more because of the inherent access to more advertising. From what I know, people on TikTok make almost nothing from view counts. YouTube going to shorts is going to start eating away at those creators.
time_to_smile 5y ago
> I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago The only way the Metaverse would be a viable replacement for Facebook would be if Occulus (or similar VR headset) adoption was to rise to the level of iPhone adoption, and subsequent integration into nearly every aspect of daily life. This seems to be incredibly unlikely to me. I have an Occulus quest. The first week I had it I thought it was the most amazing device I ever owned. A month later I used it less, and now, a few years later, it's gathering dust on a shelf. VR is great, but it takes a fair amount of energy, space and time to use. Even from solely the perspective of gaming, the low-power, light weight Switch has had a much bigger impact on my life than the Quest. I can play BotW for 4 hours without fatigue if I have time, with VR more than an hour and I start to feel very tired of the experience. Now compare the Quest with the iphone, I'm looking at my iphone as I type this on my laptop. I use my iphone to order food, find directions around town, communicate with my family, check up on work. 8 or so years back I tried going back to a "dumb" phone and ultimately went back. I switched to android for a few years and still went back to the iphone since it has so many services nicely integrated. I simply can't imagine any world where the "metaverse" comes anywhere near the adoption of facebook, even if Meta mailed an occulus to everyone on the planet for free.
lovefeature 5y ago
maybelsyrup 5y ago
> And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse and so he’s trying to make Facebook be the epicenter of it. Imagine believing this
hunterb123 5y ago
- piggybox 5y ago
  As if all other tech companies are too boring to talk about
bagacrap 5y ago
ig is neither a TikTok clone, nor is it poor. TikTok users in the West skew young (ie poor) and it's all short form video, which fb calls out as harder to monetize, so I can't see how TikTok is a threat to soak up the ad spend. We'll see what happens when they try to pivot from growth to profit. For reference, with similar userbase, ig brings in 6x the ad revenue of TikTok. The markets are unreasonably obsessed with growth imo.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

krono 5y ago

Yes to everything, but what even is a metaverse? I still have no idea.

rgbrenner 5y ago
It's the same thing the marvelverse is... a way of referring to all of facebook's products. They're just trying to generate some hype and make their products look more forward thinking.. even though they're exactly the same as always.
- sporkland 5y ago
  Metaverse is a concept originally popularized by Neal Stephenson in his book snowcrash. It's an online VR based world that is very cool and fun and most people spend there times there instead of the real world.
  - rgbrenner 5y ago
    It's a concept originally popularized in Snowcrash, that Facebook is attempting to latch on to as a marketing campaign to make their products seem future looking, but in reality havent changed one bit. To further this marketing effort, they created a VR chat that is a trash product that no one will ever use.
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  Wow, thank you for this insight. I despise them both.
wayoutthere 5y ago
A giant bag of hopium
tjpnz 5y ago
VR chat with your Facebook friends.

jamil7 5y ago

> He knows the next frontier is the meta verse Agreed with everything in this comment up until that point.

AlexandrB 5y ago
I think it works if you: s/knows/hopes/
- danrocks 5y ago
  /gi please

criddell 5y ago

If this isn't a lie and Apple flipping that switch cost Facebook $10bn, then that tells me my personal information is worth a lot. What I was getting from Facebook in exchange for my data was too little. I use Google a lot more than Facebook and frankly what I get from them in exchange for my data is probably also way too little. I wish there was some type of consumer union where we could negotiate with these companies as a block.

eric4smith 5y ago
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Not different??!
airza 5y ago
The concept you are describing is a government.
- sfe22 5y ago
  Except the government is a monopoly with its own agenda. In addition it already kind of owns us (well a large percentage), what would it gain if it negotiated this deal for us? I would argue it can gain more power by making a deal with facebook.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Digital direct democracy is a potential opportunity that has only become possible with ubiquitous computing devices (iPhones)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - pnutjam 5y ago

duxup 5y ago

I don’t see a lot TikTok type video on any of the channels I watch on YouTube.

eric4smith 5y ago
I never said they repost to YouTube
- zwirbl 5y ago
  The comment is not about repost, it's about the short video, and I also don't see much of it on yt
  - onlyfortoday2 5y ago
  - notriddle 5y ago
    The YouTube recommendation algorithm prefers longer videos than that. It is specifically trained to optimize for “watch minutes,” and longer videos seem more effective than extremely short ones.
    - ratww 5y ago
      Youtube has recently started recommending short videos too, varying from 10 sec to 1 min, but that depends on your viewing habits. They even have a "#shorts" feature to compete with TikTok.
Jenk 5y ago
Just fire up YT shorts. Nothing but content from TikTok.
- duxup 5y ago
  I think I have seen that... I don't mind it in a way as I'd rather watch it on youtube than install the tiktok app. Granted I'm also not going out of my way to watch it so not a big win for YT.

samwillis 5y ago

While I agree with you that Facebook (the app) is in decline and Facebook/Meta are rushing to diversify as the market changes, the premise of the article that Apples change has significantly effected Facebooks revenues is not a lie. Apples change has fundamentally damaged ad conversion attribution from the Facebook/Instagram apps on iOS, we have seen it it ourselves. It may be that the exact figure of $10B is inflated, it could even be an underestimate. Meta may have an agenda in how they are spinning it, almost certainly do in fact. However I can assure you that the fundaments of the article and what they are saying is true.

intrasight 5y ago
Please correct me if I'm wrong. This privacy change only affects apps on iOS? I only use the facebook.com website. Ad tracking in that context hasn't changed?
- tnel77 5y ago
  That’s true, but I’d guess that there are a lot of users that exclusively use the iOS app.
  - intrasight 5y ago
    Among my peers where I've observed how they use FB, I think it's an even split. For me, if there's a web site, I skip installing the app. And of course a majority of news and social and commerce web sites now prompt you to install the app.
    - samwillis 5y ago
      Personally when I occasionally use Facebook its via the app so that I am not logged in in by browser. Don't want them spying on everything I do online. Twitter on the other hand I use in the browser as I like to be able to open threads in tabs to come back to.
    - FearlessNebula 5y ago

codechad 5y ago

alephnan 5y ago

This seems like post-hoc confirmation of "I knew it! I told you guys so!" like people who claim a catastrophic recession is around the corner, quarter after next. If you have some special insight that the wider market doesn't and hasn't price in, then the odds and prices are asymmetrically tipped in your favor. As an example, I spent $13,580 shorting Facebook on Wednesday, which I haven't sold but will probably later today. Yesterday, those short contracts were worth north of $200k. I did it within a Roth IRA, too, which makes it even higher conviction. Truth is, it was a gamble. No one really knows. If you can truly predict where Facebook will be in 5 years, 2 years, even next quarter, you can be really rich.

chillage 5y ago
That seems a pretty smart short (in retrospect). I guess you were banking on them releasing concrete numbers on the iOS changes and people panicking from it? Seems really obvious in retrospect and relies on pretty common knowledge so I'm surprised that worked so straightforward. Good job.
- alephnan 5y ago
  I've noticed they stopped showing ads from actual businesses. Instead, it was sponsored posts from individuals self-promoting for purely vain reasons as opposed to some commercial reason.
hnburnsy 5y ago
I thought you could not short stocks in an Ira, only sell covered calls? Is there some way around this rule? https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/103114/roth-iras-investing-and-trading-dos-and-donts.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/10311...
- gruez 5y ago
  options, maybe?
  - 5y ago

bko 5y ago

> Let’s face it, what are your friends all using now? That’s right - video - YouTube and TikTok. I don't think HN reader's friends are Facebooks growth market. You might be looking at a biased sample. This is their growth levels of the last 3 years. Quarter Year MAU Q Growth A growth Q4 2021 2.912 0.07% 4.11% Q3 2021 2.91 0.52% 6.20% Q2 2021 2.895 1.47% 7.22% Q1 2021 2.853 2.00% 9.60% Q4 2020 2.797 2.08% 11.97% Q3 2020 2.74 1.48% 11.88% Q2 2020 2.7 3.73% 11.85% Q1 2020 2.603 4.20% 9.60% Q4 2019 2.498 2.00% Q3 2019 2.449 1.45% Q2 2019 2.414 1.64% Q1 2019 2.375 https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

jeromegv 5y ago
Looking at something from 2 years ago in social media isn't really relevant, trends change FAST. This TikTok trend has taken over the world quite a bit over the last few months. Also, annual growth worldwide tends to hide one key things. It might mean Facebook is arriving in markets where internet penetration was poor (poor/slow data, etc..), however you have to look at their core market where advertisers spend money. In those markets, have they been gaining users? It's been said that they were losing eyeballs in core markets while expanding in markets that didn't bring much money. If they lose customers in their core market, that means the service has been going down from their saturation point instead of stabilizing. And a worldwide growth would hide this data.

cjbgkagh 5y ago

Facebook videos are super annoying. Simple bait stretched out just long enough to get ads in the middle. Even if a video looks interesting I have to first ask myself if it’s worth 2.5 minutes of fluff and a 10 second ad for only a few seconds of payoff. Facebook has incentivized this behavior to the point I now simply refuse to click on their videos.

ChildOfChaos 5y ago

"Don’t you notice every one of your favorite content creators@ NO! Because I don't care about stupid content creators. Facebook was never really about content creators, youtube and tiktok are all about that. It's a different thing. Not that I am a Facebook fan either but yes eyeballs are going to youtube and tiktok and other content creators but it's a different business and that is why Facebook is stuck versus these.

throwhauser 5y ago

I was with you up to here: > And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse Zuckerberg has been a surprisingly good steward of the one successful idea he came across, the social network graph. His acquisitions (Instagram, etc) worked very well to supplement the social network graph and keep it going longer than it otherwise might have gone. But now that no one gives a shit about what anyone else is doing and just wants to see some jokes, that graph is getting less and less complete. The "metaverse" is an idiotic, last-ditch attempt to lock people back into the grid by turning them into cartoon versions of themselves in a private-sector universe. It's ridiculous. Facebook is flailing.

dalbasal 5y ago
There's an element of having shot themselves in the foot. FB moviled from content driven purely by your friends and what they post to content that FB have decided to feed you. That worked great in a lot of senses. You never run out of content. FB have a lot more options for their optimisation efforts. It also made them more of a general media company. But... it also devalued the social network/friends aspect. Now it's just about content and holding user attention. Well... that means competition is everything again. Anyone can post anywhere, or consume content anywhere.
- orbifold 5y ago
  Yeah, whenever I see others scrolling through content at Facebook, I can't help but wonder who would voluntarily subject themselves to so much garbage information. It is similar with Twitter, which I use for "science communication". But the amount of miscellaneous memes and low quality click bait ads that one has to endure is almost physically painful.
  - _1100 5y ago
    Isn't the short answer to "why are people subjecting themselves to this" just dark patterns? I know it sounds overly reductionist or boogeyman-esque, but they captured a market and refuse to let go, doing every single thing they can to keep and monetize human attention.

johnmato 5y ago

This is a good analysis of understand what's currently happening in the tech sphere.

ineedasername 5y ago

I don't think it's a (complete) lie. In the short term I think it is very much the truth: 2021 once again saw record revenue for them [0] so, absent a specific threat like Apple, there is no reason to project a $10B loss over expected revenue gains during the short 1-year term at issue during the call. On the other hand, Apple's actions are part of an overall trend that represents an existential threat, for the exact reasons you mention and others. The main issue is probably something like the innovators dilemma: they've become reactive, and slow in those reactions. Their largest successes in recent year haven't come from their own creations, but from acquisitions. NYT has a pretty good analysis of some of its systemic flaws [1] [0] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2022/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2021-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files...

outside1234 5y ago

Agreed - and the regular Facebook site is just awful now - my parents don’t even use it

lovehashbrowns 5y ago

YouTube already saw this with Vines, though. TikTok is just a thousand times better than Vine. But ultimately the access to long-form content is going to help YouTube more because of the inherent access to more advertising. From what I know, people on TikTok make almost nothing from view counts. YouTube going to shorts is going to start eating away at those creators.

time_to_smile 5y ago

> I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago The only way the Metaverse would be a viable replacement for Facebook would be if Occulus (or similar VR headset) adoption was to rise to the level of iPhone adoption, and subsequent integration into nearly every aspect of daily life. This seems to be incredibly unlikely to me. I have an Occulus quest. The first week I had it I thought it was the most amazing device I ever owned. A month later I used it less, and now, a few years later, it's gathering dust on a shelf. VR is great, but it takes a fair amount of energy, space and time to use. Even from solely the perspective of gaming, the low-power, light weight Switch has had a much bigger impact on my life than the Quest. I can play BotW for 4 hours without fatigue if I have time, with VR more than an hour and I start to feel very tired of the experience. Now compare the Quest with the iphone, I'm looking at my iphone as I type this on my laptop. I use my iphone to order food, find directions around town, communicate with my family, check up on work. 8 or so years back I tried going back to a "dumb" phone and ultimately went back. I switched to android for a few years and still went back to the iphone since it has so many services nicely integrated. I simply can't imagine any world where the "metaverse" comes anywhere near the adoption of facebook, even if Meta mailed an occulus to everyone on the planet for free.

lovefeature 5y ago

maybelsyrup 5y ago

> And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse and so he’s trying to make Facebook be the epicenter of it. Imagine believing this

hunterb123 5y ago

piggybox 5y ago
As if all other tech companies are too boring to talk about

bagacrap 5y ago

ig is neither a TikTok clone, nor is it poor. TikTok users in the West skew young (ie poor) and it's all short form video, which fb calls out as harder to monetize, so I can't see how TikTok is a threat to soak up the ad spend. We'll see what happens when they try to pivot from growth to profit. For reference, with similar userbase, ig brings in 6x the ad revenue of TikTok. The markets are unreasonably obsessed with growth imo.