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Instagram just asked if I wanted to chat with a Hawk Tuah AI bot. To me that’s the clearest possible evidence that the product people over there have basically

by muglug 2y ago

Instagram just asked if I wanted to chat with a Hawk Tuah AI bot. To me that’s the clearest possible evidence that the product people over there have basically given up. It reminds me of when Facebook went all-in on Live Video in 2016 — a product direction that pretty obviously came from the top.

InkCanon 2y ago
It's a clear sign Meta leadership has clearly lost the plot, giving in to hype instead of any vision.
- iLoveOncall 2y ago
  Was that not obvious enough when they renamed to Meta? It seems everyone has forgotten the absolute failure that this shift has been.
  - InkCanon 2y ago
    I don't fault them for taking risks and failing (I think at the time there was still an argument for VR, could be possible they were ahead of the curve). I think the tipping point is when they're actively pushing for things that degrade user experience.
    - rchaud 2y ago
      Ahead of the curve? Their "virtual meeting" software presentation had graphics that made you look like a Nintendo Mii avatar from 2006, and couldn't draw arms or legs.
      - riffruff24 2y ago
        I dont understand why meta didnt pair up with vrchat/gamedev/game engine dev at the time. Sure they got John Carmack, but their presentation is so much worse. Its so hard not to draw comparison with the other half baked crypto metaverse. Meanwhile Vive Index not only have Alyx but they even bring out Portal themed toybox to showcase the hardware.
      - InkCanon 2y ago
        Their execution was indeed almost comically bad. I suspect it was because they had really wanted to focus on the B2B market, so they made the most sanitised virtual world possible. The overall VR direction was not entirely ridiculous, although it was clear on the ground people were much more in love with the idea of VR than the reality of it.
- dagmx 2y ago
  Meta leadership have rarely had a vision beyond “how do we capture the success others are having in this space”. I suppose that’s a vision in and of itself but not a very inspired one. This is the case for most of their successful products: - Facebook itself started this way for Zuck - Instagram and WhatsApp were purchases to corner that market against incumbents, as is Thread - Oculus was a purchase to try and get their own app ecosystem after their phone project failed. They have brilliant engineers and put out interesting stuff, but I don’t think there’s a top down vision. Take oculus, their vision has been scattershot and even Boz says they basically make tons of different product directions and then decide what goes to market. Which sure, can work, but that also implies they don’t have a North Star to shoot for. Quest Pro was a failure and they released three types of Oculus lines close to each other (Rift, Go, Quest) before realizing the Quest was the real success path. Similarly with AI, their approach has been to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Like their celebrity AI chatbots ( https://youtu.be/sfdzkHawZLo?si=oCKAbFHjiOlFRKKh https://youtu.be/sfdzkHawZLo?si=oCKAbFHjiOlFRKKh ) or sticking GenAI in every product without a specific user story. Again, great engineering work in all of their pursuits. But if you analyze any given product venture, it’s always throwing ideas at the wall and hoping one catches.
  - blululu 2y ago
    In general this all feels right, but I don' think that a lack of a grandiose vision is necessarily a problem for a company (Facebook's mission of 'make the world more open and connected' boiled down to 'senator - we sell ads'). Product design is about delivering things that people want. Observing trends and trying to get ahead of them somehow is a big part of what makes for a successful product. The bigger issue for Meta right now is that they are not as effective at this game as they used to be. To some extent this might be an issue of brand (the Facebook portal was a great product but nobody trusts the company). But based on my experiences with their products I feel like this gets things backwards. People don't like their brand because their products suck (Apple sucks up way more personal data, but thousands of Apple fans will crawl from the woodwork to defend them) If their core products were good experiences things would be different. The engineering talent at Facebook is truly top notch and while they are good on recruiting I think a lot of it comes from a culture of excellence on the technical side. But the product and UX directions of Meta feel off. Accounts alone has personally burned me. I have an Oculus quest that was effectively reset because of Meta's accounts transitions. My Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook accounts were all separate, and are all now partially merged but transition sucked for all of them with no benefit to me the user.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  The vision is simple: drive engagement to get you to give up more information about yourself to sell to advertisers and get your eyeballs on their app to see ads made by said advertisers. If they can get you to do that to an AI, well, why not? ... besides the obvious risks to society and mental health, which Zucc has never cared about before.
- dml2135 2y ago
  The bear is sticky with honey
paganel 2y ago
Facebook the app/website is already dead, as only boomers and people like me (not yet boomers but not young, either) are now its only remaining users, while IG is going into the same realm of irrelevance, mostly because millennials (its main audience) have spiritually become boomers-like themselves. As such, Meta is throwing everything at the wall hoping that something, anything, will stick.
- FredPret 2y ago
  You mean it’s a social network that advertises exclusively to people in their prime spending years? Sounds like a roaring success to me. Looking at their financials, I’m right about that: https://valustox.com/META https://valustox.com/META. Our culture is obsessed with youth. But economically the young are not a great demographic to have frequenting your site: - fashions change quickly - they can be demanding - they have no money Contrast to a 40-60 y.o. with a net worth 100-1000x what it was when they were 19, and who are set in their ways, and one of those ways is to go on Facebook every day.
  - paganel 2y ago
    Yes, it’s in its BlackBerry 2005-2006 moment (optimistically), more like its 2008 moment (realistically). There was still lots of money coming in for both BB and Nokia around 2005-2006, too much money, for that matter, which eventually made them collapse. Ask yourself this, who do you see still using Facebook (the app) in 5-10 years’ time? But, then again, lots of people here which have a direct stake in Meta, either through owning shares or through direct employment (the same discussion applies to whenever other big US tech companies are discussed in here), so there’s no use debating. As per the focus on youth thing, which you’re correct about, how do you expect Meta to pitch to potentially future 20-something employees in, let’s say, 5 years’ time? “Come work for us cause we’ve got the boomers’ market cornered?”. That won’t work, and, at best, it will attract only people chasing the big comps, which doesn’t help at all with innovation. Granted, they still have “AI” in order to attract future worthwhile and non-mercenary talent, plus bringing in future revenues that are supposed to replace Facebook the app eventual demise, but imo that’s still an open bet at this point.
Maken 2y ago
That was back then when every tech company tried to be Twitch.
moolcool 2y ago
And then there's Meta and Apple's diversions into VR. All of these top-down hype driven product decisions which nobody actually wants are laughable.
hbn 2y ago
Facebook Live has seemed to be somewhat successful among MLM moms
itishappy 2y ago
> Hawk Tuah bot million dollar idea right there > that you can chat with on Instagram oh, nevermind
phillipcarter 2y ago
> To me that’s the clearest possible evidence that the product people over there have basically given up. Is it really though? I had my annual bubble-breaker family visit for the holidays and at least two of my family members would have totally gone for that.

by muglug 2y ago

InkCanon 2y ago

It's a clear sign Meta leadership has clearly lost the plot, giving in to hype instead of any vision.

iLoveOncall 2y ago
Was that not obvious enough when they renamed to Meta? It seems everyone has forgotten the absolute failure that this shift has been.
- InkCanon 2y ago
  I don't fault them for taking risks and failing (I think at the time there was still an argument for VR, could be possible they were ahead of the curve). I think the tipping point is when they're actively pushing for things that degrade user experience.
  - rchaud 2y ago
    Ahead of the curve? Their "virtual meeting" software presentation had graphics that made you look like a Nintendo Mii avatar from 2006, and couldn't draw arms or legs.
    - riffruff24 2y ago
      I dont understand why meta didnt pair up with vrchat/gamedev/game engine dev at the time. Sure they got John Carmack, but their presentation is so much worse. Its so hard not to draw comparison with the other half baked crypto metaverse. Meanwhile Vive Index not only have Alyx but they even bring out Portal themed toybox to showcase the hardware.
    - InkCanon 2y ago
      Their execution was indeed almost comically bad. I suspect it was because they had really wanted to focus on the B2B market, so they made the most sanitised virtual world possible. The overall VR direction was not entirely ridiculous, although it was clear on the ground people were much more in love with the idea of VR than the reality of it.
dagmx 2y ago
Meta leadership have rarely had a vision beyond “how do we capture the success others are having in this space”. I suppose that’s a vision in and of itself but not a very inspired one. This is the case for most of their successful products: - Facebook itself started this way for Zuck - Instagram and WhatsApp were purchases to corner that market against incumbents, as is Thread - Oculus was a purchase to try and get their own app ecosystem after their phone project failed. They have brilliant engineers and put out interesting stuff, but I don’t think there’s a top down vision. Take oculus, their vision has been scattershot and even Boz says they basically make tons of different product directions and then decide what goes to market. Which sure, can work, but that also implies they don’t have a North Star to shoot for. Quest Pro was a failure and they released three types of Oculus lines close to each other (Rift, Go, Quest) before realizing the Quest was the real success path. Similarly with AI, their approach has been to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Like their celebrity AI chatbots ( https://youtu.be/sfdzkHawZLo?si=oCKAbFHjiOlFRKKh https://youtu.be/sfdzkHawZLo?si=oCKAbFHjiOlFRKKh ) or sticking GenAI in every product without a specific user story. Again, great engineering work in all of their pursuits. But if you analyze any given product venture, it’s always throwing ideas at the wall and hoping one catches.
- blululu 2y ago
  In general this all feels right, but I don' think that a lack of a grandiose vision is necessarily a problem for a company (Facebook's mission of 'make the world more open and connected' boiled down to 'senator - we sell ads'). Product design is about delivering things that people want. Observing trends and trying to get ahead of them somehow is a big part of what makes for a successful product. The bigger issue for Meta right now is that they are not as effective at this game as they used to be. To some extent this might be an issue of brand (the Facebook portal was a great product but nobody trusts the company). But based on my experiences with their products I feel like this gets things backwards. People don't like their brand because their products suck (Apple sucks up way more personal data, but thousands of Apple fans will crawl from the woodwork to defend them) If their core products were good experiences things would be different. The engineering talent at Facebook is truly top notch and while they are good on recruiting I think a lot of it comes from a culture of excellence on the technical side. But the product and UX directions of Meta feel off. Accounts alone has personally burned me. I have an Oculus quest that was effectively reset because of Meta's accounts transitions. My Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook accounts were all separate, and are all now partially merged but transition sucked for all of them with no benefit to me the user.
lenerdenator 2y ago
The vision is simple: drive engagement to get you to give up more information about yourself to sell to advertisers and get your eyeballs on their app to see ads made by said advertisers. If they can get you to do that to an AI, well, why not? ... besides the obvious risks to society and mental health, which Zucc has never cared about before.
dml2135 2y ago
The bear is sticky with honey

paganel 2y ago

Facebook the app/website is already dead, as only boomers and people like me (not yet boomers but not young, either) are now its only remaining users, while IG is going into the same realm of irrelevance, mostly because millennials (its main audience) have spiritually become boomers-like themselves. As such, Meta is throwing everything at the wall hoping that something, anything, will stick.

FredPret 2y ago
You mean it’s a social network that advertises exclusively to people in their prime spending years? Sounds like a roaring success to me. Looking at their financials, I’m right about that: https://valustox.com/META https://valustox.com/META. Our culture is obsessed with youth. But economically the young are not a great demographic to have frequenting your site: - fashions change quickly - they can be demanding - they have no money Contrast to a 40-60 y.o. with a net worth 100-1000x what it was when they were 19, and who are set in their ways, and one of those ways is to go on Facebook every day.
- paganel 2y ago
  Yes, it’s in its BlackBerry 2005-2006 moment (optimistically), more like its 2008 moment (realistically). There was still lots of money coming in for both BB and Nokia around 2005-2006, too much money, for that matter, which eventually made them collapse. Ask yourself this, who do you see still using Facebook (the app) in 5-10 years’ time? But, then again, lots of people here which have a direct stake in Meta, either through owning shares or through direct employment (the same discussion applies to whenever other big US tech companies are discussed in here), so there’s no use debating. As per the focus on youth thing, which you’re correct about, how do you expect Meta to pitch to potentially future 20-something employees in, let’s say, 5 years’ time? “Come work for us cause we’ve got the boomers’ market cornered?”. That won’t work, and, at best, it will attract only people chasing the big comps, which doesn’t help at all with innovation. Granted, they still have “AI” in order to attract future worthwhile and non-mercenary talent, plus bringing in future revenues that are supposed to replace Facebook the app eventual demise, but imo that’s still an open bet at this point.

Maken 2y ago

That was back then when every tech company tried to be Twitch.

moolcool 2y ago

And then there's Meta and Apple's diversions into VR. All of these top-down hype driven product decisions which nobody actually wants are laughable.

hbn 2y ago

Facebook Live has seemed to be somewhat successful among MLM moms

itishappy 2y ago

> Hawk Tuah bot million dollar idea right there > that you can chat with on Instagram oh, nevermind

phillipcarter 2y ago

> To me that’s the clearest possible evidence that the product people over there have basically given up. Is it really though? I had my annual bubble-breaker family visit for the holidays and at least two of my family members would have totally gone for that.