6 ms·

Facebook scrambles to escape stock’s death spiral as users flee, sales drop

71 points by donsupreme 4y ago

CynicusRex 4y ago
Glad to see my quitfacebook.org is finally getting some sweet action.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
The US is a small percentage of FB usage. It is the internet in some countries. Amazing that an iOS update did this though.
- bdangubic 4y ago
  how much money do you think they make in countries where they are "the internet..."?
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  And it’s difficult for facebook to argue that apple giving users the option to keep their data private was anticompetitive. This is the classic problem of building on someone else’s platform. I know facebook tried their own phone and bubble based android launchers, but they seemed to give that up too easily. In comparison to the money being spent on meta, attacking their weaknesses on the device front might have been a better avenue. They could have bought their way in rather than building it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- nier 4y ago
  According to this article [1] in the New York Times the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency isn’t among the four biggest challenges for Facebook. Daring Fireball has it summarized [2] like so: “The age problem”: Young people aren’t using Facebook at all and are using Instagram less, but the success of both platforms as advertising revenue bonanzas is predicated on usage by the youth demographic. “The innovation problem”: Facebook hasn’t invented a new hit since the blue app itself and its other successes were all acquired. “The metaverse problem”: They’re betting the company on AR/VR, but it remains to be seen whether that’s going to be a big thing. “The antitrust problem”: No summary necessary. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/briefing/facebook-metaverse-meta-problems.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/briefing/facebook-metaver... [2] https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/facebooks_problems https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/facebooks_problems
- ergocoder 4y ago
  In Thailand, the new Bangkok governor do Facebook live almost every day on his work. 100,000+ views on almost every video from a city of 8m. It is truly refreshing to have this kind of transparency. I have faith in FB. It is a good communication/community tool. They have to tone down the VR thing a bit. It is not the time for VR yet.
  - hirvi74 4y ago
    I'd rather FB tone down the blatant anti-privacy practices against their users first.
    - ergocoder 4y ago
      We are talking about how FB can survive, not how it would be nice for you. Also, this may come as a surprise to you, but, in many other parts of the world, privacy is low in priority to solve, especially in developing countries.
- russiasux 4y ago
  Examining away the current FB disaster with an iOS update completely missed the point. Facebook has one customer: advertisers and billions of products. The only way for them to fuck this up is to screw their advertisers (mostly small businesses) to the extent that THE ADVERTISERS LEAVE. Yes users leaving is bad, but if they continued to evolve their ad product it would easily be possible to compensate for that... except they aren't about evolving things so much as they are about breaking things... At their customers expense (advertisers). Having spent many many years with a Facebook ad budget measured in percentages of a multimillion dollar gross, which is now zero due to being sold bot impressions constantly, and having my ability to remove those bot impressions... removed.. My guess is that at this point I am not alone. Going from 8% gross to zero is going to hurt if it happens across every small business in the country. If you own FB stock... Consider yourself warned. It's WAY worse than Musk's estimate of 20% bots on Twitter (because the bots are written to... Well... Engage with ads and thereby avoid being banned by generating revenue for FB). The Metaverse will not solve this problem. Ever.
rchaud 4y ago
$6.7b in quarterly profit and $40b in cash on hand. Plenty of money to burn on selling people the idea of virtual real estate and Nintento Mii quality avatars. They're trying to juice ad numbers by jamming more Tiktok style reels into people's IG feeds, which will likely cause an even bigger exodus among IG's biggest accounts.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
IronWolve 4y ago
Many of my friends moved off due to censorship, even my state republican group moved over to mewe, my gf's book club moved to mewe, few of my family members closed their fb due to politics on their hobby groups. Seems like all the big platforms are running off users. I use to watch my podcasts on youtube, now its at least a 3rd on rumble. Its kinda neat that the big corps politics are spawning up tons of other platforms.
antifa 4y ago
This must be why I suddenly started receiving emails for things I normally only get push notifications for.
jimcavel888 4y ago
boxmonster 4y ago
I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the early internet. Foisting this mall world on us is not going to work. I hope they adjust.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. The "Metaverse" might be a flop, but what about other VR games? There's tons of good ones out there. And if you have a decent gaming PC, you can use your Oculus with it and play all the games on SteamVR.
  - boxmonster 4y ago
    That's my second disappointment. I prefer programming to playing games. Programming is my game. If I could stake a claim in the Metaverse and build Spalding Gray world (boxmonster comes from his Monster in a Box) so that Spalding was part of the virtual world then I would. Something similar to how I can build a website. Spalding Gray world just an example of what I'd like to be able to freely do for very little cost. The Metaverse should be more like Minecraft and less like AOL.
    - therealdrag0 4y ago
      Do you program both for day job and after work as hobby? I love coding but sorta don’t let myself after work because I don’t wanna get burned out.
      - boxmonster 4y ago
        I watch movies to relax
- 4y ago

71 points by donsupreme 4y ago

Glad to see my quitfacebook.org is finally getting some sweet action.

The US is a small percentage of FB usage. It is the internet in some countries. Amazing that an iOS update did this though.

bdangubic 4y ago
how much money do you think they make in countries where they are "the internet..."?
twobitshifter 4y ago
And it’s difficult for facebook to argue that apple giving users the option to keep their data private was anticompetitive. This is the classic problem of building on someone else’s platform. I know facebook tried their own phone and bubble based android launchers, but they seemed to give that up too easily. In comparison to the money being spent on meta, attacking their weaknesses on the device front might have been a better avenue. They could have bought their way in rather than building it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nier 4y ago
According to this article [1] in the New York Times the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency isn’t among the four biggest challenges for Facebook. Daring Fireball has it summarized [2] like so: “The age problem”: Young people aren’t using Facebook at all and are using Instagram less, but the success of both platforms as advertising revenue bonanzas is predicated on usage by the youth demographic. “The innovation problem”: Facebook hasn’t invented a new hit since the blue app itself and its other successes were all acquired. “The metaverse problem”: They’re betting the company on AR/VR, but it remains to be seen whether that’s going to be a big thing. “The antitrust problem”: No summary necessary. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/briefing/facebook-metaverse-meta-problems.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/briefing/facebook-metaver... [2] https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/facebooks_problems https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/facebooks_problems
ergocoder 4y ago
In Thailand, the new Bangkok governor do Facebook live almost every day on his work. 100,000+ views on almost every video from a city of 8m. It is truly refreshing to have this kind of transparency. I have faith in FB. It is a good communication/community tool. They have to tone down the VR thing a bit. It is not the time for VR yet.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  I'd rather FB tone down the blatant anti-privacy practices against their users first.
  - ergocoder 4y ago
    We are talking about how FB can survive, not how it would be nice for you. Also, this may come as a surprise to you, but, in many other parts of the world, privacy is low in priority to solve, especially in developing countries.
russiasux 4y ago
Examining away the current FB disaster with an iOS update completely missed the point. Facebook has one customer: advertisers and billions of products. The only way for them to fuck this up is to screw their advertisers (mostly small businesses) to the extent that THE ADVERTISERS LEAVE. Yes users leaving is bad, but if they continued to evolve their ad product it would easily be possible to compensate for that... except they aren't about evolving things so much as they are about breaking things... At their customers expense (advertisers). Having spent many many years with a Facebook ad budget measured in percentages of a multimillion dollar gross, which is now zero due to being sold bot impressions constantly, and having my ability to remove those bot impressions... removed.. My guess is that at this point I am not alone. Going from 8% gross to zero is going to hurt if it happens across every small business in the country. If you own FB stock... Consider yourself warned. It's WAY worse than Musk's estimate of 20% bots on Twitter (because the bots are written to... Well... Engage with ads and thereby avoid being banned by generating revenue for FB). The Metaverse will not solve this problem. Ever.

rchaud 4y ago

$6.7b in quarterly profit and $40b in cash on hand. Plenty of money to burn on selling people the idea of virtual real estate and Nintento Mii quality avatars. They're trying to juice ad numbers by jamming more Tiktok style reels into people's IG feeds, which will likely cause an even bigger exodus among IG's biggest accounts.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

IronWolve 4y ago

Many of my friends moved off due to censorship, even my state republican group moved over to mewe, my gf's book club moved to mewe, few of my family members closed their fb due to politics on their hobby groups. Seems like all the big platforms are running off users. I use to watch my podcasts on youtube, now its at least a 3rd on rumble. Its kinda neat that the big corps politics are spawning up tons of other platforms.

antifa 4y ago

This must be why I suddenly started receiving emails for things I normally only get push notifications for.

jimcavel888 4y ago

boxmonster 4y ago

I've read "cyberpunk" novels so I had a certain vision of what a virtual world would look like that I probably share with a lot of people. Believe me, it's not the worlds biggest online cyber mall with cyber mall cops telling me to behave myself. Metaverse is a corporate wet dream. I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the early internet. Foisting this mall world on us is not going to work. I hope they adjust.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> I regret spending money on my Oculus glasses. The "Metaverse" might be a flop, but what about other VR games? There's tons of good ones out there. And if you have a decent gaming PC, you can use your Oculus with it and play all the games on SteamVR.
- boxmonster 4y ago
  That's my second disappointment. I prefer programming to playing games. Programming is my game. If I could stake a claim in the Metaverse and build Spalding Gray world (boxmonster comes from his Monster in a Box) so that Spalding was part of the virtual world then I would. Something similar to how I can build a website. Spalding Gray world just an example of what I'd like to be able to freely do for very little cost. The Metaverse should be more like Minecraft and less like AOL.
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    Do you program both for day job and after work as hobby? I love coding but sorta don’t let myself after work because I don’t wanna get burned out.
    - boxmonster 4y ago
      I watch movies to relax
4y ago