3 ms·

It's interesting that Portal never benefited from the COVID work-from-home boom, as it was excellently positioned for that.

bsimpson 4y ago
People who had them loved them, but I think FB's reputation cost them here. Nobody wants the internet's least scrupulous site running a camera inside their homes.
- dangus 4y ago
  I also think the closed platform hurt. Why buy a webcam desk tablet thingy that only works with Facebook when you can get an iPad and use FaceTime, Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, and the list goes on into infinity? An iPad is only $329 or less if you buy and old model and it can run millions of apps and be taken with you. I think Facebook thought that this product might be nice for people who are too non-technical to use a tablet. But like, who is that customer exactly? Reminds me of those internet appliances from the 90s. It was inevitable that regular computers would replace them.
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    Agreed. This is a case of FB product managers/engineers trying to solve a problem that is not worth solving for. Yes, having some sort of inexpensive video calling tablet can be more convenient but it's not convenient enough to justify over an iPad or phone video call.
    - seanhunter 4y ago
      I think the actual history is that they built them for internal videocalling inside FB and then decided to sell them without really doing the research on the outside market. 1. "Man videoconferencing totally blows and is really expensive!" [1] "We've got lots of smart people and expertise in streaming video from live events, bet we could knock together a solution in no time" (a team builds internal FB solution) 2. "Man our internal FB videoconferencing rules! It's a shame all those plebes in the wider world can't experience how great this is" "What if we take the gizmo we've built for every meeting room and turn it into a consumer device?" 3. <don't worry about step 3> 4. Profit! [1]This was absolutely the case circa like 2012. Cisco had the only really decent enterprise option and it was really expensive. All the other ones couldn't interoperate and were terrible.
leganthropane 4y ago
I'm sure they took privacy and data security very seriously, but they do have a Reputation. People I talk to thought of it as a telescreen, not a video conferencing tool. That probably hurt sales. I wonder if Meta could have made better pivots if they had accepted and embraced their untrustworthy image.
reassembled 4y ago
Most remote workers at my company either have a company-provided laptop with a webcam or have a company-provided webcam for their company-provided PC. The only reason someone would buy a Meta Portal would be if their company exclusively did their remote work via Meta’s platforms. Most companies use Teams or Slack anymore, and those can be used with any old webcam and/or a headset. Most folks on my team don’t even turn their webcam on during our weekly stand-up meetings, and we aren’t required to do so.
vineyardmike 4y ago
Yea. They’re great hardware it seems and they’ve been still adding features. I recently learned you can screen share with it as a second screen.

bsimpson 4y ago

People who had them loved them, but I think FB's reputation cost them here. Nobody wants the internet's least scrupulous site running a camera inside their homes.

dangus 4y ago
I also think the closed platform hurt. Why buy a webcam desk tablet thingy that only works with Facebook when you can get an iPad and use FaceTime, Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, and the list goes on into infinity? An iPad is only $329 or less if you buy and old model and it can run millions of apps and be taken with you. I think Facebook thought that this product might be nice for people who are too non-technical to use a tablet. But like, who is that customer exactly? Reminds me of those internet appliances from the 90s. It was inevitable that regular computers would replace them.
- senttoschool 4y ago
  Agreed. This is a case of FB product managers/engineers trying to solve a problem that is not worth solving for. Yes, having some sort of inexpensive video calling tablet can be more convenient but it's not convenient enough to justify over an iPad or phone video call.
  - seanhunter 4y ago
    I think the actual history is that they built them for internal videocalling inside FB and then decided to sell them without really doing the research on the outside market. 1. "Man videoconferencing totally blows and is really expensive!" [1] "We've got lots of smart people and expertise in streaming video from live events, bet we could knock together a solution in no time" (a team builds internal FB solution) 2. "Man our internal FB videoconferencing rules! It's a shame all those plebes in the wider world can't experience how great this is" "What if we take the gizmo we've built for every meeting room and turn it into a consumer device?" 3. <don't worry about step 3> 4. Profit! [1]This was absolutely the case circa like 2012. Cisco had the only really decent enterprise option and it was really expensive. All the other ones couldn't interoperate and were terrible.

leganthropane 4y ago

I'm sure they took privacy and data security very seriously, but they do have a Reputation. People I talk to thought of it as a telescreen, not a video conferencing tool. That probably hurt sales. I wonder if Meta could have made better pivots if they had accepted and embraced their untrustworthy image.

reassembled 4y ago

Most remote workers at my company either have a company-provided laptop with a webcam or have a company-provided webcam for their company-provided PC. The only reason someone would buy a Meta Portal would be if their company exclusively did their remote work via Meta’s platforms. Most companies use Teams or Slack anymore, and those can be used with any old webcam and/or a headset. Most folks on my team don’t even turn their webcam on during our weekly stand-up meetings, and we aren’t required to do so.

vineyardmike 4y ago

Yea. They’re great hardware it seems and they’ve been still adding features. I recently learned you can screen share with it as a second screen.