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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

by 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
>People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time I believe people want Meta to fail because the spent the better part of last 5 years completely eviscerating their reputation and goodwill. While Facebook, at its prepandemic peak was hemorrhaging young users and becoming known as the platform for misinformation and arguments due to the chase for engagements at all costs, Zuckerberg was bust cosplaying as presidential candidate. People want Facebook to fail and I think that's a consequence of how terrible their reputation has become.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Exactly. I also want Meta to fail because the company has proven itself to be immoral and a poor steward of meaningful social contact over the internet, but my biggest beef is with the rotting Facebook platform that has turned into something awful over the past 10 years. That being said, I want Meta's involvement in a "metaverse" to fail too, because I can't imagine living in a world where Zuck sinks his dark pattern and advertising fangs into an even more immersive version of today's manipulative social media. They've done enough damage as is.
- endofreach 4y ago
  Lets just stop calling them meta. They are still the evil facebook.
miketery 4y ago
The metaverse is not bombing. It’s simply not tied to one platform. Between TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft, call of duty (and other triple A multiplayer games), we’re already there. Meta can’t win this one. Same way that no single game publisher can dominate video games. Even the hardware, fine meta becomes the first “Nintendo”. So what? The PlayStations and Xbox’s will come. No one will let Meta have a monopoly.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Between TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft, call of duty (and other triple A multiplayer games), we’re already there. How are those "metaverse"?
  - optimuspaul 4y ago
    > How are those "metaverse"? Good question. My guess is because those things are all 3D virtual worlds (to some extent) and/or a platform that is focused on social connection. Obviously they all need some connective tissue and evolution before they are a legit meta verse.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    Well, that goes to the question of "what is does 'metaverse' mean anyway?" I haven't seen a description of what 'metaverse' means that doesn't just describe Minecraft (which I love).
    - pempem 4y ago
      these folks, fwiw, claim there's a $5T opportunity by 2030: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/value-creation-in-the-metaverse https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-s... tldr: all the $$ still comes from commoditizing community building by subjecting them to ads and counting conversion. Conversion is always a tricky beast to count, even in our intense tracking of individuals and attempt/successes at tracking users across time, applications, sessions and devices and I'm just honestly not sure how much more humans can handle being advertised to or even spend as things get tighter and tighter. At some point cool new [insert object here] doesn't matter when you are calculating the gas needed to warm your home and thinking about using your hot bathwater to do so.
TwoNineA 4y ago
> People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. No, people want Meta/Facebook to fail because frankly, they are evil. - Instagram is toxic to young girls: https://childmind.org/blog/instagram-is-harmful-to-teenage-self-esteem/ https://childmind.org/blog/instagram-is-harmful-to-teenage-s... - Misinformation: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=facebook+misinformation https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=facebook+misinformation - How many people died because of Covid conspiracy theories they read on Facebook?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Meta literally facilitated genocide in Myanmar as well as sex slavery by failing to properly screen ads and in some cases didn't even have anybody who could read the language they were in.
  - jimlongton 4y ago
    Also psychologically experimenting on their users intentionally making them unhappy [1], knowingly facilitating terrorism [2] and enabling race based advertising which blocked black people accessing housing [3]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/10/facebook-experiments-on-users/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/10/facebook... [2] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/a-look-at-boz-bosworth-ugly-facebook-memo/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/a-look-at-bo... [3] https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-racial-ad-targeting-multicultural-affinity-updates-criticism-1528877 https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-racial-ad-targeting-multic...
colinmhayes 4y ago
The only real question that meta has is Mark. As far as I can tell there is no reason for mark to ever listen to investors and scrap his passion projects in order to increase profitability. Sure he'll crank up the ads to keep them happy, but in the end he has unlimited money and can't be fired, and that's not changing even if meta literally loses money for the next decade. It seems that with the metaverse he's embraced that which is why he effectively told wall st. to fuck off on the earnings call last week.

by mjr00 4y ago

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

>People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time I believe people want Meta to fail because the spent the better part of last 5 years completely eviscerating their reputation and goodwill. While Facebook, at its prepandemic peak was hemorrhaging young users and becoming known as the platform for misinformation and arguments due to the chase for engagements at all costs, Zuckerberg was bust cosplaying as presidential candidate. People want Facebook to fail and I think that's a consequence of how terrible their reputation has become.

dont__panic 4y ago
Exactly. I also want Meta to fail because the company has proven itself to be immoral and a poor steward of meaningful social contact over the internet, but my biggest beef is with the rotting Facebook platform that has turned into something awful over the past 10 years. That being said, I want Meta's involvement in a "metaverse" to fail too, because I can't imagine living in a world where Zuck sinks his dark pattern and advertising fangs into an even more immersive version of today's manipulative social media. They've done enough damage as is.
endofreach 4y ago
Lets just stop calling them meta. They are still the evil facebook.

miketery 4y ago

The metaverse is not bombing. It’s simply not tied to one platform. Between TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft, call of duty (and other triple A multiplayer games), we’re already there. Meta can’t win this one. Same way that no single game publisher can dominate video games. Even the hardware, fine meta becomes the first “Nintendo”. So what? The PlayStations and Xbox’s will come. No one will let Meta have a monopoly.

sofixa 4y ago
> Between TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft, call of duty (and other triple A multiplayer games), we’re already there. How are those "metaverse"?
- optimuspaul 4y ago
  > How are those "metaverse"? Good question. My guess is because those things are all 3D virtual worlds (to some extent) and/or a platform that is focused on social connection. Obviously they all need some connective tissue and evolution before they are a legit meta verse.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Well, that goes to the question of "what is does 'metaverse' mean anyway?" I haven't seen a description of what 'metaverse' means that doesn't just describe Minecraft (which I love).
  - pempem 4y ago
    these folks, fwiw, claim there's a $5T opportunity by 2030: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/value-creation-in-the-metaverse https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-s... tldr: all the $$ still comes from commoditizing community building by subjecting them to ads and counting conversion. Conversion is always a tricky beast to count, even in our intense tracking of individuals and attempt/successes at tracking users across time, applications, sessions and devices and I'm just honestly not sure how much more humans can handle being advertised to or even spend as things get tighter and tighter. At some point cool new [insert object here] doesn't matter when you are calculating the gas needed to warm your home and thinking about using your hot bathwater to do so.

TwoNineA 4y ago

> People really want Meta to fail because the "metaverse" is one of the dumbest pivots of an established company of all time. No, people want Meta/Facebook to fail because frankly, they are evil. - Instagram is toxic to young girls: https://childmind.org/blog/instagram-is-harmful-to-teenage-self-esteem/ https://childmind.org/blog/instagram-is-harmful-to-teenage-s... - Misinformation: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=facebook+misinformation https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=facebook+misinformation - How many people died because of Covid conspiracy theories they read on Facebook?

colinmhayes 4y ago
Meta literally facilitated genocide in Myanmar as well as sex slavery by failing to properly screen ads and in some cases didn't even have anybody who could read the language they were in.
- jimlongton 4y ago
  Also psychologically experimenting on their users intentionally making them unhappy [1], knowingly facilitating terrorism [2] and enabling race based advertising which blocked black people accessing housing [3]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/10/facebook-experiments-on-users/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/10/facebook... [2] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/a-look-at-boz-bosworth-ugly-facebook-memo/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/a-look-at-bo... [3] https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-racial-ad-targeting-multicultural-affinity-updates-criticism-1528877 https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-racial-ad-targeting-multic...

colinmhayes 4y ago

The only real question that meta has is Mark. As far as I can tell there is no reason for mark to ever listen to investors and scrap his passion projects in order to increase profitability. Sure he'll crank up the ads to keep them happy, but in the end he has unlimited money and can't be fired, and that's not changing even if meta literally loses money for the next decade. It seems that with the metaverse he's embraced that which is why he effectively told wall st. to fuck off on the earnings call last week.