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Meta Myths

• chowchowchow 4y ago
  Surprised at this post. Arguing against that meta is dying is a straw man. It’s not a myth that the growth thesis from here is weak and there’s a massive headwind on cash flow from all the money being thrown at the metaverse projects with no foreseeable revenue upside.
  • camdat 4y ago
    According to the article, this is a myth. > Myth 5: Meta’s Spending is a Waste Any rebuttal to the arguments he makes?
    • chowchowchow 4y ago
      He doesn’t defend the metaverse spending. He argues it’s not that much comparably but a) that’s kinda subjective. Is 10 out of 40 billion a lot? and b) that’s no defense really.
      • camdat 4y ago
        >The problem with this line of reasoning is that Meta’s capital expenditures are directly focused on both of the two main reasons for alarm: TikTok and ATT. That is because the answer to both challenges is more AI, and building up AI capacity requires a lot of capital investment. >In the long run, though, this investment should pay off. First, there are the benefits to better targeting and better recommendations I just described, which should restart revenue growth. Second, once these AI data centers are built out the cost to maintain and upgrade them should be significantly less than the initial cost of building them the first time. Third, this massive investment is one no other company can make, except for Google (and, not coincidentally, Google’s capital expenditures are set to rise as well).
        • chowchowchow 4y ago
          And? Neither of those quotes mentions metaverse spending.
          • camdat 4y ago
            RL spending (that 10B you're mentioning) includes this capital expenditure. Obviously the percentage of that 10B going to deployment is unknown, but given that it's the most expensive part (according to the author), I assume it's the majority.
      • gumby 4y ago
        They might have overbet on VR, but they remember acutely that they "lost mobile" which was basically an existential threat for them. Through major* effort they clawed their way back to the top on mobile. I guess Z thinks that VR is the next phase and that they aren't going to make the same mistake again. He's certainly been interested since buying Oculus. Even if they don't sell a lot of headsets, they will probably have more experience than anyone else on what works and doesn't, and how that relates to the experiences they need to create. Of course this depends on VR actually mattering, which I doubt. Perhaps some of that will apply to AR, though when that goes mainstream is another big question. * Normally the adjective "heroic" would be appropriate to describe the level of effort, but somehow I can't use that word when talking about a company, much less one like FB.
• AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  The article talks about the long term focus but I always felt there's a better way to achieve a long-term foothold in VR. The key is to build up a set of patents so that you can enter the market when the tech is there. This takes some investment but not nearly as much as trying to force the metaverse to happen now. So I disagree with idea that the leadership has a long term focus. They are trying to make the metaverse happen before it's ready. This is very shortsighted. They could scale back and maintain a holding pattern for far less cost.
• ksec 4y ago
  Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. But the real story is simply Human Nature at work. Everyone ( or at least a sufficient amount of people with Power ) hates Facebook. And they need a good story to shit on it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • uniformlyrandom 4y ago
    > Everyone hates Facebook No, not everyone. Everyone on Reddit, and 50% on HN hate Facebook. All the power they have is to post snarky comments, upvote, and (maybe) downvote.
    • tangue 4y ago
      I actually did love Facebook and had success with ads in the past but there were so much redesigns in the ad manager that I can’t use it anymore
    • bckr 4y ago
      They also have the power to stop using it. Easier said than done, as I know because I still use Messenger.
  • nvarsj 4y ago
    2 billion DAU (and growing) seems to be a strong argument against "everyone hates FB".
    • JeremyNT 4y ago
      Is it? It's entirely possible to both use something due to (perceived) necessity while still hating it. In certain contexts that distinction may not matter - a user is a user, right, who cares how much they hate you? But if a large enough percentage of your users hate your service, it should at least in theory reduce whatever moat you've built that keeps them captive.
• AlbertCory 4y ago
  A good article. > This level of investment simply isn’t viable for a company like Snap or Twitter or any of the other also-rans in digital advertising (even beyond the fact that Snap relies on cloud providers instead of its own data centers) Let's change the industry to autos: "Funbag Autos has a massive investment in aluminum companies. This level of investment simply isn’t viable for a company like Tesla ... (even beyond the fact that Tesla relies on outside aluminum companies instead of its own" In other words: "vertical integration is good." It can also weigh you down and keep you from advancing your technology. As for Metaverse: he admits it's a loser, but maybe not that terrible in the grand scheme of things.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    > In other words: "vertical integration is good." It can also weigh you down and keep you from advancing your technology. Counterexample: Apple.
    • AlbertCory 4y ago
      It's not a "counterexample" because I didn't give an example. In any case, it's never a simple answer: vertical integration has advantages and disadvantages.
      • tokai 4y ago
        A counterexample is not a counter to an example given, but an example that counters or refutes what has been stated.
        • bee_rider 4y ago
          It seems impossible that a single example could counter a statement that is basically "it is good but also has some downsides."
          • tokai 4y ago
            I'm just correcting AlbertCory's wrong understanding of the word counterexample. I don't care for their discussion.
• PaulWaldman 4y ago
  I quiet quite Facebook about a year ago. This wasn't intentional or purposeful, the platform was just no longer serving content that I found interesting. My browers is still logged in though and I see ads by Facebook while browsing other sites. Am I still considered a DAU? If so, is Facebook the new DoubleClick?
  • camdat 4y ago
    > Am I still considered a DAU? No.
    • miroljub 4y ago
      What is DAU?
      • david_allison 4y ago
        Daily Active User
      • Jarwain 4y ago
        Daily Active User, in this context for fb.com or the app. I'd be surprised if they counted seeing fb ads off fb as part of the DAU count
      • luckylion 4y ago
        In German, it's Dümmster Anzunehmender User (most stupid user expected).
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • throwthere 4y ago
    "Daily Active Users (DAUs). We define a daily active user as a registered and logged-in Facebook user who visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our Messenger application (and is also a registered Facebook user), on a given day. We view DAUs, and DAUs as a percentage of MAUs, as measures of user engagement on Facebook." So, no.
• sathish316 4y ago
  “The long-term solution to ATT, though, is to build probabilistic models that not only figure out who should be targeted, but also understanding which ads converted and which didn’t.” What does this even mean? Is it really possible to build models where the conversion label itself is not deterministic due to ATT and has to be predicted by another probabilistic model?
  • alexpotato 4y ago
    My understanding of how FB advertising worked as the following: 1. You purchase ads on FB 2. You tell FB how much a conversion is worth to you (let's call that $W) 3. You link your site to FB (via a pixel etc) so that they can automatically measure conversions. They say this is for you so that you can see which ads are actually working. 4. In reality, FB now knows what a conversion is worth to you so they can keep upping the price per ad till it gets as close to $X as you can take before you stop advertising. If ATT is in play now, FB doesn't know the conversion rate and then can't tell how much to "squeeze" you by raising the price. That would therefore incentivize them to figure out other ways to figure out that rate otherwise how can they maximize advertising revenue if they can't squeeze you?
    • disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      Honestly, I'm not sure how to say this politely, but your argument does not map to my understanding of how FB ads worked (I was there from 2013-18, predominantly working on ads). Steps 1-3 are correct, step 4 is not. What actually happened is that you'd say I want to spend $10 on FB ads. There's a system called pacing that reduces your bid most of the time so that you don't run out of budget before the end of the day. Separate to this, FB estimated how likely a user was to click/convert on your ad, and multiplied your bid by this probability (times 1000). This number was used to rank your ad against other ads/content. So, what would actually happen is that you'd see amazing performance on that $10 budget, and you'd be like FB rocks spend all the money. Unfortunately, because of the way the above worked, when you 10xed the budget it would all far apart. If FB had actually wanted to maximise short term revenue they might have behaved like you said, but the reason they've made so much money over the years is that they were always much more focused on the longer-term revenue.
• _jvqe 4y ago
  There was a time when CGI was state of the art. Seeing VR and AR as any kind of substitute for analog interactions shows the culture/lifestyle divide in plain english. I enjoy entertainment, but the 21st century has so many options that do not require any flavor of fiction. I agree with the authors capitalistic view that if facebook disappeared, there would be another to replace it (if there was a market there). With the ratio of illiteracy, i can't say that much of social media was anything except a time suck of filtering inferior and/or obsolete gibberish. I worked on my golf swing instead. And by chance, it has stayed 100% analog, without adding any technology to it. I'm a technology native too and was introduced to golf about 8 years after technology.
• saltythrowaway 4y ago
  Throwaway for obvious reasons. I joined to work on meta ads semi-recently. My thinking was that they were under invested in techniques I knew were successful from my time at Google. What I found was a lot of smart people who knew they were under invested and we're capable of closing the gap, but the infrastructure they sat upon was too hard to use to do anything different, and management that rewarded the appearance of great work more than great work. The result was a lot of config changes making noise in metrics that could be read positively, without implementing the state of the art systems that took a year before you could write a fancy success workplace post about it. That would risk poor performance reviews and the shuffling of reasources away from your team as a result. And now, it's becoming apparent that the very very smart people started leaving after the stock dropped and the replacements are both more expensive and less able to get used to Facebook's infra. The result on the ground looks like a very serious engineering death spiral that management has not signaled they understand or have a grip on.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • hintymad 4y ago
    > management that rewarded the appearance of great work more than great work. T Two reasons: 1. The management can't really differentiate appearance from substance. 2. The management is not incentivized to reward great work. Either way, it shows the failure of Meta's culture. > but the infrastructure they sat upon was too hard to use to do anything different Ironically, so many Meta engineers had such superficial understanding of their platforms and infrastructure that they couldn't even pass the most basic interview discussions on systems design. Seems another sign that Meta grossly over hired or had a culture that focused only on some so-called impact.
  • eachro 4y ago
    if you're allowed to say, what sort of techniques from google are they underinvested in?
    • saltythrowaway 4y ago
• mjr00 4y ago
  Interesting article. People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. Since the pivot and rename happened a year ago, the metaverse has probably bombed -- and I say probably only because nobody can define exactly what it is, still, beyond people having VR meetings with odd pseudo-Mii avatars -- and the investors convinced that Zuckerberg was having a Jobs-esque visionary moment have realized, "Wait, maybe the critics were right and this is bullshit." But as the article points out.. maybe none of this matters. Advertising spend is still going up, the recession may or may not be turning a corner, and there's enough cash buffer to walk things back and refocus on Meta's core advertising business and products that support that.
  • giantrobot 4y ago
    I don't think it's a question of can Meta walk things back but whether Zuckerberg has the humility to do so. It certainly doesn't seem like Zuckerberg possesses that ability so it's more likely they'll just double down on "the metaverse".
    • Spivak 4y ago
      I don’t think they actually have to walk anything back. Facebook seems like it’s going to still be successful even if the metaverse loses money forever.
    • JustSomeNobody 4y ago
      Well, his avatar does have legs now... But, yeah, he's too desperate to be/have the next great (hardware) platform. He wants the "metaverse" to be what Apple and Google have with their hardware and app stores. There's no way he walks it back.
  • stephc_int13 4y ago
    Bullshit. A healthy cashflow is obviously vital for any big corporation, but tech is not about cashflow, it is mainly about innovation.
  • nemothekid 4y ago
• atirip 4y ago
  > Reels usage is still growing But of course, as Meta put gun to the head of everyone - you WILL make Reels, or else - and now all the people I follow, increasingly make Reels. I hate Reels.
  • Spivak 4y ago
    Yeah but they’re not really for you. They’re for making it easy for Tiktok creators to cross-post their content. IG, FB, and YT all realized that if they force creators to choose between making Tiktoks and posts/videos they’re going to make Tiktoks. The cost of making entirely separate content has to be worth the extra audience and you can change the calculus by making the cost really low.
    • voisin 4y ago
      The super annoying thing about reels is how they don’t just play fully in the feed the way Tik Tok does. You see a weird 2 second loop and on that have to choose whether to engage. And FB has a horrible history with video, filling the feed with videos 10x too long that had no point and not letting users track forward. I cannot hate FB more than I do. If it wasn’t for Marketplace, my account would have been deactivated years ago. And even Marketplace is obnoxious in a myriad of ways.
      • bruceb 4y ago
        Marketplace always switches back to non local pickup when you search for something new. So annoying. We get you make no money from p2p local selling but they should just accept that and not make the users experience worse.
        • voisin 4y ago
          The crazy thing is they fill the feed with ads in between the p2p stuff so they should be making money, and those ads would be much more relevant since they know a user’s search terms (so higher rates per ad), but then they just make the user experience of searching suck. I’d say the entire Facebook UX sucks. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was a startup with inexperienced designers. Shocking how complicated and lazy it feels.
• stephc_int13 4y ago
  I am pretty sure that Kodak or Nokia had pretty healthy results when the wind turned for them. Those kinds of ships are so big that it is very easy for managers, investors and employees to convince themselves that everything is _fine_. The biggest problem, for Meta, in my opinion, is not the brand, not the business model and not the competition. The problem is much worse because it is internal and probably too late to fix. Their engineering culture as a whole is a one trick pony.
  • rmvt 4y ago
    > Their engineering culture as a whole is a one trick pony. what do you mean by this? what's their one trick?
    • stephc_int13 4y ago
      The most important component of a technology company is its engineering culture. This is something that is built early, most of the time with a strong influence from the founders/CTO. Once it is built and scaled up, it can still change but very slowly. You can hire extremely talented outsiders (John Carmack) but it won't do much. A company like Meta is like an overfitted AI model, they can do one thing very well and almost everything else very bad. Take a look at horizon universe, does it look like state of the art for you?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • miketery 4y ago
    Can you expand more on the one truck pony? My understanding is that they have some of the best build tools, AB testing infra, and global scalability.
    • stephc_int13 4y ago
      Exactly.
  • 4y ago
• alerter 4y ago
  I always wondered if it was a mistake for Facebook to try to rapidly casualise VR after acquiring Oculus. If they spent even a small fraction of their metaverse billions developing high-end, niche products (flight/mech sims etc.) then they could cultivate a loyal base of affluent users. It probably wouldn't be profitable by itself, but it would grow their user base and act as a nice showcase of what VR is capable of. More so than the cartoon office space vibe.
  • eklitzke 4y ago
    To be fair, the Meta Quest Pro is a pretty high-end product.
    • r00fus 4y ago
      For $1500. Who's buying?
      • dpratt 4y ago
        The amount of people who are willing to pay $1500 for high-quality VR hardware is not a huge market, but a rabid one filled with enthusiasts and early adopters. It's likely enough to fund research into how to produce a more mass market solution. The amount of people in the first group who are willing to pay for a device that requires you to tie every single action and usage into Meta's data-pipeline Hoover of personal information is likely near zero.
      • fbn79 4y ago
        The First iPhone cost was ~900$ (inflaction adjusted) and was not able to record video (many other less expensive phone coulded).
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
  • AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    Yep slow and steady rather than trying to make it happen now would be the real long term play. Apple tried to make the Newton happen a decade too early. It worked in the end but they did the right thing in not trying to repeatedly double down on making it work before all the pieces of the puzzle came into play (mobile networks, better touchscreens, efficient CPUs, enough storage to hold music, etc.).
• hintymad 4y ago
  The All-In Podcast had a chart (https://youtu.be/A-bIpJdaCnM?t=2126 https://youtu.be/A-bIpJdaCnM?t=2126) that compared the Meta's investment on VR with the investment that changed human history in the past, all inflation adjusted. It's pretty interesting. iPhone: $3.6B, Tesla: $25B, Boeing: $32B, Apollo: $253B. And Meta's Reality Lab: $4B a quarter!
  • pchristensen 4y ago
    Just to be clear, "Apollo" here is the Apollo space program that invented and manufactured space flight and moon landing and return, over 13 years, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Through all the Meta-verse skepticism, I kept thinking that the payoff could be worth it if they capture the next big platform. But this put the scale of the investment in context, and now I doubt that even the wildest success will payoff for $250B of spending. And that's not even counting the opportunity cost of what else FB could do with that money.
    • throwthere 4y ago
      The $250 billion spend is "projected" over 10 years by the commentator. Would META spend $25 billion/year indefinitely without earning a profit? I don't know but other scenarios seem plausible too.
      • nicolashahn 4y ago
        As long as Zuck is in charge, yes.
        • gordon_freeman 4y ago
          This. The problem with Meta is that nobody can confront Zuck and remind him that this is really a bad idea RoI wise. Zuck is unhinged and makes the decisions as he pleases even at the company of this scale.
          • a123b456c 4y ago
• paulpauper 4y ago
  Meta made so many mistakes, the metaverse being one. Facebook's layout sucks, imho. The old one was better. There is a long history of VR being a commercial failure. This is something that could have been avoided. With PE ratio of just 9, it' very cheap though.
  • justapassenger 4y ago
    There was also a long history of PDAs being commercial failures. I'm not saying that Facebook will succeed there. But in the past VR was a failure because tech was just not ready. Is it ready now? Maybe. Will it fail? Maybe. But past failures will have nothing to do with future ones.
    • paulpauper 4y ago
      Isn't the iPhone an extension of the cellphone, not the pda?
• adventured 4y ago
  Meta definitely isn't dying, it's sliding into old age and slow growth. It's Walmart with Amazon (TikTok) on the scene. Walmart didn't disappear due to Amazon; Amazon's growth didn't actually erode Walmart backwards in any meaningful way; Amazon's growth likely came in part at the expense of Walmart. TikTok is a large niche social network, as are all major social networks in the West except for Facebook. That's why it'll find a lower plateau than FB core in terms of users, as with Pinterest, Snap, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, WhatsApp (if one even cares to consider WhatsApp & Co. social networks, either way). Walmart hasn't been a great investment during the Amazon era. 20 years ago WMT was ~$55 / share. Inflation adjusted that's around $90 per the BLS (likely there has been more inflation than that). Today WMT is $142. So 20 years to add 57%. And sure, they pay a dividend, that merely makes the return a bit less mediocre - the S&P 500 is up 336% in that time for example. Meta, as with many (previously) overvalued tech stocks from this era, is in for a long stagnation vs the recent highs. It'll remind you of Microsoft ~2001-2015. Future returns were massively pulled forward. The pandemic remoting hyper activity era also pulled returns massively forward in other areas, which will be paid for via many years of stagnation in areas like advertising, ecommerce and remote tech (eg Zoom is an excellent example of said future returns being pulled forward; growth in remoting that might have taken a decade gradually, was zoomed forward courtesy of the pandemic; now the hangover).
• ramesh31 4y ago
  I've really softened on Zuck in the last couple years. The Metaverse stuff looks stupid from the outside, but all else considered, isn't this exactly what we've been asking for out of FAANG for the last ten years? To put all of these insane resources into something that at least could be a cool future to live in? I was the biggest skeptic on earth when they bought Oculus, and assumed it was the death of VR. But they've been steadily grinding at it, and the newly released Meta Pro is, as someone with extensive experience with all of the consumer headsets, the first product that looks like an actual generational leap above the initial headsets. They are really nailing the big problems with VR, which are control (the inside-out tracked controls with Meta Pro are an industry first), and form factor ease of use. Look at what literally every other company is doing right now. Apple's keynotes consist of new emojis and better cameras. Google I/O is literally just an ad for GCP at this point. Amazon isn't even trying to pretend they are doing anything innovative, beyond adding to the AWS hairball. I think Zuck has about a 5% chance of success here, but the fact that he's trying something new is better than anything else in tech ATM.
  • flashgordon 4y ago
    Yeah the lemonade I am hoping to see here is this can actually result in hardware commoditazion and accelerate research in a bunch of other areas.
  • fomine3 4y ago
    Yeah, I don't like Meta but it's great that they heavily invest their profit to xR/"metaverse". I don't know will finally "metaverse" used well , but it's exciting to see growing.
  • danuker 4y ago
    As long as the VR that Zuck is building is just another walled garden, I am not at all interested. Why wouldn't I play Minetest, OpenTTD, or whatever other social videogame for which I can host a server myself? I see little value in artificial scarcity coupled with complete surveillance, and awkward and expensive hardware requirements.
• Barrin92 4y ago
  Article seems to argue against something that not many people are arguing, which is that Meta is at risk of imminent death. It's a giant, if it dies it will be a very slow, boring and drawn out affair. Without a doubt they are still a money printing machine with billions of users but the real debate is whether they at all still innovate and the Metaverse discussion which Ben barely spends a paragraph on should be at the center of it given that they've even staked their name on it. Anything people like about FB is companies they bought or features they copied. WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. The blue app is the Java of social media, everyone uses it but nobody likes it. Meta has a governance model that should be very dynamic, Zuckerberg is literally dictator for life. But the thing they've only ever been successful at is making money, which if anything is owed to people like Sandberg, who now seem to be leaving. A company that is run essentially by one person has the business model of something that's run by a committee, and the one creative decision he makes in decades seems like a total flop. That should at least be slightly alarming.
• cma 4y ago
  > The long-term solution to ATT, though, is to build probabilistic models that not only figure out who should be targeted (which, to be fair, Meta was already using machine learning for), but also understanding which ads converted and which didn’t. If Apple sees Meta as a threat now that Meta are getting into devices, all they have to do is add a rule that probalistic models of conversions beyond a certain scale of computation aren't allowed, and that anyone operating over $X amount of revenue on their platform is subject to invasive audit to make sure they aren't doing it. They can figure out a way to say it is for privacy but that they themselves can do it, or they can make it so users can opt in to probalistic models with different defaults and wording on the dialog for third parties vs for Apple like they do now for tracking (Apple calls others' tracking in the prompt 'tracking your activity', for their own they call it 'ad personalization').
• dont__panic 4y ago
  Myth 1: Users Are Deserting Facebook ..The problem with this narrative is that Meta is still adding users: the company is up to 2.93 billion Daily Active Users (DAUs), an increase of 50 million, and 3.71 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs), an increase of 60 million.. I've been wondering about this for a while now: who are these people who are still using Facebook every day? All of my family has reduced facebook usage over the last few years because fewer and fewer people post meaningful content. And as more friends and family leave facebook entirely, I've noticed more and more family members who don't check their news feed at all -- they'll just occasionally respond to Facebook Messages. Is Meta combining DAU numbers between Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp? Because I'm sure those Whatsapp numbers go up and up, since it's the default method of communication in a huge number of countries. I know that my anecdotal experience isn't necessarily reality. But it's getting hard to ignore the fact that many friends and family have essentially abandoned Facebook and Instagram, to the point that these services aren't being used meaningfully by my friends and family any more. Maybe developing countries are still growing userbases? Or maybe Meta's "DAU" definition just doesn't capture the slippage from "hooked on the news feed" to "responds to a message once per day"?
  • Ekaros 4y ago
    I have an account but I can't remember last time I logged in. Maybe it is users that are forced to use it to check some restaurants or likes Facebook page? And even then be annoyed about the popups...
  • ernestipark 4y ago
    I think we have to adjust our understanding of what 'using' Facebook means. Despite its flaws FB has done a good job of layering useful products on top of the social network despite the original purpose of Facebook seemingly losing popularity. In my circles, the typical news feed and posting updates part of Facebook is pretty much dead, and I never use those features personally anymore. BUT Marketplace, Messenger, and niche groups are all very valuable. It's changed from 'something cool' to a utility. Also, given these DAUs are measured in billions and there are users all over the globe, chances are usage in different parts of the world and for different ages and demographics looks incredibly different.
• zarriak 4y ago
  All that matters is that Facebook continues to be generally disliked by anyone who would run the next Instagram/WhatsApp/Oculus. But as recent events such as Figma show anything it probably just means another 0 so they have to spend 10,20,30 billion instead of the 1 or 3 they used to.
• ladyattis 4y ago
  I think Facebook by itself could survive well but the problem is one of perception that the platform Facebook is tied to the whole VR/metaverse nonsense which is probably scaring some investors as one reliable product being forced to carry the weight of an unreliable/unproven one is a recipe for trouble. It probably won't sink either Facebook or its company but it will make both of them less well off. Zuckerberg should've taken the hint when he first acquired Occulus and kept them at arm's length at minimum as to allow for the company to grow its portfolio rather than being just stuck with Facebook, Instagram, or Occulus VR as their shoe-in to long term profitability alone. Zuckerberg should've taken the Alphabet approach which would've allowed him more freedom to toy with the whole metaverse thing without having to perform for shareholders on that front.
• noncoml 4y ago
  Maybe I’m being a bit too cynical, but why would someone take time to write this article if they think Meta is doing great? My guess is that they are stuck with a lot of shares and want the price to go up to get rid of them. If I thought Meta is doing great, I wouldn’t try to convince others that, I would take the opportunity to buy and horde as many stocks as possible.
  • colinmhayes 4y ago
    > but why would someone take time to write this article if they think Meta is doing great? Because you're a tech blogger who gets paid to blog about tech and don't have any better ideas this week?
  • vineyardmike 4y ago
    It’s kinda what business analysts do.. white about the future of businesses. Ben writes about tech companies every day (4 a week?) and one article a week is free to non-subscribers. He’s smart enough to know which ones to give away. My guess is that it’s probs good for business to give away the flashy ones that get people talking.
  • fumar 4y ago
    Ben Thompson always writes positive Meta and FB content. I was a paid subscriber until I realized his strong bias for all things Zuck.
• mFixman 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a former Meta employee and I still hold a bit of love and nostalgia for the company. The article is right to point out that Meta has by far the largest and most sophisticated ad targeting and tracking system in the market. The problem is that even if you don't count Apple's ATT the window of places where they can use it is getting smaller: Facebook the app is a shell of its former self, WhatsApp is un-monetiseable despite a lot of attempts to get companies to pay directly to talk to other users, and new acquisitions are impossible in this post-Obama era. Instagram is growing, but mostly in countries with relarively low ad spending levels. And there comes the difference between this drop and the one in 2018: ads work when people want to spend money on products. The pressures of inflation, rising cost of living, and devaluation of almost every currency to the USD is putting a block in the one reliable source of income for the company. I would bet on Meta's stock price rising if the economic and social crisis in Europe magically improves tomorrow. Otherwise, it's a matter of believing in the Metaverse and hoping the Oculus Pro becomes successful enough to at least provide another large source of revenue for the company.
  • drewda 4y ago
    > ads work when people want to spend money on products That's a good "30,000 foot view" summary of how consumer advertising businesses work.
• jpeter 4y ago
  It would be a smart move for meta to quickly build a twitter clone. The twitter self destruct countdown is ticking
  • nicolashahn 4y ago
    Twitter is already just a subset of Facebook
    • smeagull 4y ago
      There is value in pulling that subset out of the extra bullshit. I'd love a twitter alternative that I could use for publicly broadcasting short messages. Especially if it didn't require people be logged in to scroll down.
    • dehrmann 4y ago
      There's a meme that two ways to make a business are either bundle or unbundle.
• SkySkimmer 4y ago
  I thought this would be myths about myths, but it's actually facebook gossip. Does anyone know any interesting myths about myths?
• karaterobot 4y ago
  Interesting. So, why is the stock down to 42% of what it was the last time he said it had a bright future? Stock price isn't everything, to be sure, but: what metric, set of metrics, or other piece of information would Thompson use to evaluate whether Meta's next 5 years is going to be better than its last 5 years?