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Meta is on the same path that Nokia and Kodak once followed. They will survive, but they will bleed and shrink a lot, and their relevance will likely be insign

Meta is on the same path that Nokia and Kodak once followed. They will survive, but they will bleed and shrink a lot, and their relevance will likely be insignificant ten years from now. The Metaverse bet is dumb, they simply can't execute and even if they could this whole Metaverse thing is likely to stay in the videogame's realm for a very long time.

realusername 4y ago
> The Metaverse bet is dumb I see it as an attempt to keep propping up the stock value, I don't even think they believe it themselves
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  Well, if this is a PR op this is the dumbest and more cost-inefficient one you can imagine. We're talking 10B a year. 10 Billions a year.
  - realusername 4y ago
    I has no idea it was this costly, that's crazy ... Yeah maybe I'm wrong and they really seriously bet on this weird project
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    How much of that is just relabeled activities that they would do anyway? Relabeling things is almost free, and leads to very high numbers.
- fuckHNtho 4y ago
  yes, this is the obvious explanation and i dont get why public discussion can't make any progress but insists on throwing out the same "i dont think my mom wants to live inside minecraft yet" weak take every chance it gets. edit: it coincided with fb reporting saturated user numbers
- akomtu 4y ago
  FB wont be the one to make it happen, but I can see how a "minecraft with stable diffusion" will be all the rage in ten years.
- strix_varius 4y ago
  They definitely believe in it. Talk to anyone you know who works at Meta - it's obviously the top thing on Zuck's mind (and that's been clear every Thursday for years now). FRL is getting huge funding in a way it wouldn't if this were just to prop value. (personally, I admire that - FB has pushed VR technology forward a couple of generations, singlehandedly)
tmpz22 4y ago
Im just dumbfounded that they would take a burgeoning technology like VR and set the impossible goal that it would one day supplant the absurd profits of their ad business. Thats like trying to tag your kid as a Heisman trophy winner as the kid is being birthed. Sure be a proud parent but understand you are delusional. Facebook is a company with nearly two decades of big tech experience, 40,000+ employees, and unfathomable amounts of capitol/IP/assets. To see them make the same logical leap as a two person startup of fresh-out-of-college optimists.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  Someone I know recently got contacted by a recruiter for Meta's VR team, with the pitch that the team "wants to get 1Bn [users] by end of year!". That'd amount to converting 30% of all Facebook users to VR users, worldwide, in four months. Including a bunch of users internationally who don't even own computers, and certainly can't afford VR hardware. "Delusional" is absolutely the word for it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jayd16 4y ago
  Supposedly Apple is dropping a headset in the next year. Should be interesting to see what people think of the industry after that.
  - stephc_int13 4y ago
    What are your expectations about Apple in this regard? I am curious, but I have low expectations.
    - jayd16 4y ago
      Honestly, no idea. I'm just interested to see the shoe drop.
  - tmpz22 4y ago
derefr 4y ago
> and even if they could this whole Metaverse thing is likely to stay in the videogame's realm for a very long time There are already concerts with paid tickets going on in platforms like Fortnite, that just happen to be able to act as multi-user VR environments, even though that wasn't their designed purpose. The demand is real. I don't see it as much of a bet that "people are already creating these events, and want to build professional services around doing so; these people would appreciate a platform to run such events on that won't be shut down/go unmaintained in two years just because the game that the platform was built for ceases to be relevant; and people who pay to attend these events are willing to download a client to consume the content they paid for." That just seems to be a series of common-sense facts to me. Whether Facebook can actually end up as the platform of choice for hosting said events is entirely non-obvious. But, if nothing else, they do have connections, channel partners, global scale to deploy reliable infrastructure that can be trusted to not buckle under event load, etc. It's up in the air how much things like "the aesthetics of the experience" really matter, compared to those. How much does a band care about the aesthetics of the venue?
- hedora 4y ago
  Second Life has been doing this for over a decade. I see no reason to expect Meta to do a better job, and see every reason for people to assume they’ve done a maliciously-bad job, given their reputation.
  - hbn 4y ago
    It'll be worse than Second Life because they'll censor anything that isn't brand-friendly to Facebook (and there is certainly a lot of stuff like that on SL - it's a lot of the reason people play it!)
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  Would you trust Meta with a new social platform? Do you think your friends will? If they can execute (I believe they can't) and if the Metaverse is the next huge thing that some are predicting (I think their vision is too dependent on VR/AR magically becoming practical) They still have a huge reputation issue; they are already bleeding users on FB and Insta. They need a miracle.
whydoineedone 4y ago
whimsicalism 4y ago
The Metaverse bet is dumb, but I wonder at the ten years.. Both Whatsapp and IG seem relatively sticky.
jayd16 4y ago
Why do you think they can't execute? What is execution in your mind and why is it out of reach?
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  First, company culture, on the technical side, a team full of fat, overpaid cats surrounded by the worst kind of bureaucracy, most of them spent most of their careers doing web stuff, what they achieved so far is underwhelming, to say the least. Second, Meta is a huge corporation, the money makers don't let the kids play for too long, and they won't let Zuck burn all the cash, no matter how much theoretical power he has in his hands, they won't let him bleed the cash cow to death. Third, we have enough History to see a pattern, Nokia and Kodak saw the iceberg, it didn't matter. And small things like Carmack leaving and Zuck being delusional are clear hints of what is going on internally.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Execute to me would be providing the user experience they're showing in their own videos, many of which are simply not possible with headset technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY Just a ton of little things. Woman floating horizontally in space. Possible to render. Not possible to convey to the player. Cards, basically impossible to actually have cards that have good physics in a networked game like that. The smooth floaty motion and spinning is particularly dumb.
  - jayd16 4y ago
    >Woman floating horizontally in space. Possible to render. Not possible to convey to the player You could just have head and hand tracking with the rest of the body rigged and animated separate from the tracking. Player doesn't control the legs, they just dangle and animate. The cards are technically possible. The trick is you just fake the physics. It doesn't need to be networked in a low latency way at all. I would say the least realistic is the fine grained tracking and handling of things as thin as cards. Hand tracking isn't tight enough to manipulate a hand of cards naturally yet. That said, if you give some leeway to what the first person UX is vs how other avatars are displayed, its not so far off from whats possible especially if you would allow "reveal your hand and have it float away in zero G" to be pre-canned animations that the user triggers.
root_axis 4y ago
> The Metaverse bet is dumb It's a moon shot, but I wouldn't call it dumb, it's actually a pretty obvious business decision. Keep in mind, Oculus (now being rebranded as Meta) is currently the preeminent VR platform and has sold more devices than every other competitor combined. This is a potentially huge opportunity for them to expand their social media reach into a completely pristine market that they already dominate. Meta is in a unique opportunity to define the future of VR, it'd be dumb not to try something like this. Of course, none of this addresses the abysmal branding or Meta's horrible reputation or the public's perception of Zuck as the herald of a technocratic dystopia. I also agree that VR will indefinitely remain within the realm of videogames, and gaming is not in Meta's DNA which I think will probably be their biggest barrier to success. Still... they own the VR market, they also have plenty of cash on hand, and that goes a very long way when trying to make the impossible possible, e.g. the xbox...
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  Microsoft had DirectX and a decent kernel before building the XBox. The hardware part was much easier, and also an easy target (do better than Sony) and they had a slow start. Also, MS had quite a bit of experience in building/maintaining a platform for developers. Frankly, we're not talking about the same kind of leap.
- codalan 4y ago
  At the end of the day, they will have IP rights for a lot of VR related technology, and that will be worth something.
smaryjerry 4y ago
Meta has already screwed up Facebook from a UI perspective which is 2D. It feels clunky and ugly in my opinion, and was better designed when it originally came out. Now they seem to be on the same path with their Metaverse apps - low quality Wii like graphics that feel 20 years old already.
codalan 4y ago
I don't think it's totally dumb. There's a lot of IP and patent rights to be gained. Even if Metabook shrinks back, they will always have a possible revenue stream in enforcing those rights and collecting royalties on newcomers to the VR market.
kemiller 4y ago
I had a front row seat to Kodak's demise, and I can tell you that the depth of their denial internally was far, far greater than Meta's today. Not to say that Meta isn't in trouble, but I wouldn't count them out just yet. They are at least trying to keep up. Kodak only embraced the digital world grudgingly, and they sabotaged all their most promising initiatives because they threatened the (incredibly) lucrative film gravy train that they couldn't bring themselves to accept was ending. I'm sure all the decision makers who presided over that downfall took comfortable early retirement offers and didn't suffer for their mistakes.
nfw2 4y ago
A lot of technology has started with gaming driving much of the early development, including PCs, graphics, AI, and the internet. Whether Meta can execute on the metaverse bet is fair question, but I expect most of the changes they are envisioning will come one way or another.
vhold 4y ago
I think VR needs pretty badly to pivot in general, it's an amazing technology that tries to replace phones/computer interfaces where it should be working with them. I don't want to strap a thing to my face and "be in VR" for a long period of time, navigating menus by pressing giant virtual buttons or pointing lasers at them. I want to, while using google maps on a phone or computer, be able to hold the headset up to my face and look around briefly and then take it back off. Same with data visualizations, 3D models, short-form entertainment, etc. Standing in VR looking at loading screens is an awful experience. It should already be loaded to what I want to do. It's hard to imagine Meta making that pivot since they seem to want to have a walled garden like Apple's. But they could at the very least make navigating/loading by a phone app an option. Even track the phone in VR, have a mirrored twin of it (with a kind of blown-up holographic version of it you can more easily read), that you can use in and outside of VR, and instead of their controllers.
janaagaard 4y ago
> The Metaverse bet is dumb I think something that can improve the remote work experience could be worth a lot. It’s still to early to judge.

realusername 4y ago

> The Metaverse bet is dumb I see it as an attempt to keep propping up the stock value, I don't even think they believe it themselves

stephc_int13 4y ago
Well, if this is a PR op this is the dumbest and more cost-inefficient one you can imagine. We're talking 10B a year. 10 Billions a year.
- realusername 4y ago
  I has no idea it was this costly, that's crazy ... Yeah maybe I'm wrong and they really seriously bet on this weird project
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  How much of that is just relabeled activities that they would do anyway? Relabeling things is almost free, and leads to very high numbers.
fuckHNtho 4y ago
yes, this is the obvious explanation and i dont get why public discussion can't make any progress but insists on throwing out the same "i dont think my mom wants to live inside minecraft yet" weak take every chance it gets. edit: it coincided with fb reporting saturated user numbers
akomtu 4y ago
FB wont be the one to make it happen, but I can see how a "minecraft with stable diffusion" will be all the rage in ten years.
strix_varius 4y ago
They definitely believe in it. Talk to anyone you know who works at Meta - it's obviously the top thing on Zuck's mind (and that's been clear every Thursday for years now). FRL is getting huge funding in a way it wouldn't if this were just to prop value. (personally, I admire that - FB has pushed VR technology forward a couple of generations, singlehandedly)

tmpz22 4y ago

Im just dumbfounded that they would take a burgeoning technology like VR and set the impossible goal that it would one day supplant the absurd profits of their ad business. Thats like trying to tag your kid as a Heisman trophy winner as the kid is being birthed. Sure be a proud parent but understand you are delusional. Facebook is a company with nearly two decades of big tech experience, 40,000+ employees, and unfathomable amounts of capitol/IP/assets. To see them make the same logical leap as a two person startup of fresh-out-of-college optimists.

duskwuff 4y ago
Someone I know recently got contacted by a recruiter for Meta's VR team, with the pitch that the team "wants to get 1Bn [users] by end of year!". That'd amount to converting 30% of all Facebook users to VR users, worldwide, in four months. Including a bunch of users internationally who don't even own computers, and certainly can't afford VR hardware. "Delusional" is absolutely the word for it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jayd16 4y ago
Supposedly Apple is dropping a headset in the next year. Should be interesting to see what people think of the industry after that.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  What are your expectations about Apple in this regard? I am curious, but I have low expectations.
  - jayd16 4y ago
    Honestly, no idea. I'm just interested to see the shoe drop.
- tmpz22 4y ago

derefr 4y ago

> and even if they could this whole Metaverse thing is likely to stay in the videogame's realm for a very long time There are already concerts with paid tickets going on in platforms like Fortnite, that just happen to be able to act as multi-user VR environments, even though that wasn't their designed purpose. The demand is real. I don't see it as much of a bet that "people are already creating these events, and want to build professional services around doing so; these people would appreciate a platform to run such events on that won't be shut down/go unmaintained in two years just because the game that the platform was built for ceases to be relevant; and people who pay to attend these events are willing to download a client to consume the content they paid for." That just seems to be a series of common-sense facts to me. Whether Facebook can actually end up as the platform of choice for hosting said events is entirely non-obvious. But, if nothing else, they do have connections, channel partners, global scale to deploy reliable infrastructure that can be trusted to not buckle under event load, etc. It's up in the air how much things like "the aesthetics of the experience" really matter, compared to those. How much does a band care about the aesthetics of the venue?

hedora 4y ago
Second Life has been doing this for over a decade. I see no reason to expect Meta to do a better job, and see every reason for people to assume they’ve done a maliciously-bad job, given their reputation.
- hbn 4y ago
  It'll be worse than Second Life because they'll censor anything that isn't brand-friendly to Facebook (and there is certainly a lot of stuff like that on SL - it's a lot of the reason people play it!)
stephc_int13 4y ago
Would you trust Meta with a new social platform? Do you think your friends will? If they can execute (I believe they can't) and if the Metaverse is the next huge thing that some are predicting (I think their vision is too dependent on VR/AR magically becoming practical) They still have a huge reputation issue; they are already bleeding users on FB and Insta. They need a miracle.

whydoineedone 4y ago

whimsicalism 4y ago

The Metaverse bet is dumb, but I wonder at the ten years.. Both Whatsapp and IG seem relatively sticky.

jayd16 4y ago

Why do you think they can't execute? What is execution in your mind and why is it out of reach?

stephc_int13 4y ago
First, company culture, on the technical side, a team full of fat, overpaid cats surrounded by the worst kind of bureaucracy, most of them spent most of their careers doing web stuff, what they achieved so far is underwhelming, to say the least. Second, Meta is a huge corporation, the money makers don't let the kids play for too long, and they won't let Zuck burn all the cash, no matter how much theoretical power he has in his hands, they won't let him bleed the cash cow to death. Third, we have enough History to see a pattern, Nokia and Kodak saw the iceberg, it didn't matter. And small things like Carmack leaving and Zuck being delusional are clear hints of what is going on internally.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Execute to me would be providing the user experience they're showing in their own videos, many of which are simply not possible with headset technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY Just a ton of little things. Woman floating horizontally in space. Possible to render. Not possible to convey to the player. Cards, basically impossible to actually have cards that have good physics in a networked game like that. The smooth floaty motion and spinning is particularly dumb.
- jayd16 4y ago
  >Woman floating horizontally in space. Possible to render. Not possible to convey to the player You could just have head and hand tracking with the rest of the body rigged and animated separate from the tracking. Player doesn't control the legs, they just dangle and animate. The cards are technically possible. The trick is you just fake the physics. It doesn't need to be networked in a low latency way at all. I would say the least realistic is the fine grained tracking and handling of things as thin as cards. Hand tracking isn't tight enough to manipulate a hand of cards naturally yet. That said, if you give some leeway to what the first person UX is vs how other avatars are displayed, its not so far off from whats possible especially if you would allow "reveal your hand and have it float away in zero G" to be pre-canned animations that the user triggers.

root_axis 4y ago

> The Metaverse bet is dumb It's a moon shot, but I wouldn't call it dumb, it's actually a pretty obvious business decision. Keep in mind, Oculus (now being rebranded as Meta) is currently the preeminent VR platform and has sold more devices than every other competitor combined. This is a potentially huge opportunity for them to expand their social media reach into a completely pristine market that they already dominate. Meta is in a unique opportunity to define the future of VR, it'd be dumb not to try something like this. Of course, none of this addresses the abysmal branding or Meta's horrible reputation or the public's perception of Zuck as the herald of a technocratic dystopia. I also agree that VR will indefinitely remain within the realm of videogames, and gaming is not in Meta's DNA which I think will probably be their biggest barrier to success. Still... they own the VR market, they also have plenty of cash on hand, and that goes a very long way when trying to make the impossible possible, e.g. the xbox...

stephc_int13 4y ago
Microsoft had DirectX and a decent kernel before building the XBox. The hardware part was much easier, and also an easy target (do better than Sony) and they had a slow start. Also, MS had quite a bit of experience in building/maintaining a platform for developers. Frankly, we're not talking about the same kind of leap.
codalan 4y ago
At the end of the day, they will have IP rights for a lot of VR related technology, and that will be worth something.

smaryjerry 4y ago

Meta has already screwed up Facebook from a UI perspective which is 2D. It feels clunky and ugly in my opinion, and was better designed when it originally came out. Now they seem to be on the same path with their Metaverse apps - low quality Wii like graphics that feel 20 years old already.

codalan 4y ago

I don't think it's totally dumb. There's a lot of IP and patent rights to be gained. Even if Metabook shrinks back, they will always have a possible revenue stream in enforcing those rights and collecting royalties on newcomers to the VR market.

kemiller 4y ago

I had a front row seat to Kodak's demise, and I can tell you that the depth of their denial internally was far, far greater than Meta's today. Not to say that Meta isn't in trouble, but I wouldn't count them out just yet. They are at least trying to keep up. Kodak only embraced the digital world grudgingly, and they sabotaged all their most promising initiatives because they threatened the (incredibly) lucrative film gravy train that they couldn't bring themselves to accept was ending. I'm sure all the decision makers who presided over that downfall took comfortable early retirement offers and didn't suffer for their mistakes.

nfw2 4y ago

A lot of technology has started with gaming driving much of the early development, including PCs, graphics, AI, and the internet. Whether Meta can execute on the metaverse bet is fair question, but I expect most of the changes they are envisioning will come one way or another.

vhold 4y ago

I think VR needs pretty badly to pivot in general, it's an amazing technology that tries to replace phones/computer interfaces where it should be working with them. I don't want to strap a thing to my face and "be in VR" for a long period of time, navigating menus by pressing giant virtual buttons or pointing lasers at them. I want to, while using google maps on a phone or computer, be able to hold the headset up to my face and look around briefly and then take it back off. Same with data visualizations, 3D models, short-form entertainment, etc. Standing in VR looking at loading screens is an awful experience. It should already be loaded to what I want to do. It's hard to imagine Meta making that pivot since they seem to want to have a walled garden like Apple's. But they could at the very least make navigating/loading by a phone app an option. Even track the phone in VR, have a mirrored twin of it (with a kind of blown-up holographic version of it you can more easily read), that you can use in and outside of VR, and instead of their controllers.

janaagaard 4y ago

> The Metaverse bet is dumb I think something that can improve the remote work experience could be worth a lot. It’s still to early to judge.