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Absolutely. Zuckerberg was willing to burn tens of billions on a metaverse that no one wanted. Staying relevant is worth every penny he spent on Moltbook. We're

Absolutely. Zuckerberg was willing to burn tens of billions on a metaverse that no one wanted. Staying relevant is worth every penny he spent on Moltbook. We're deep in a repeat of the dot-com boom. The interesting question is what will rise from the ashes and take down old guard of FB, Google, Salesforce, Oracle, etc.

Eisenstein 7mo ago
The dot com bust wasn't at all like that, though? What 'arose' were the players that had leadership with an actual plan besides 'launch IPO based on hype and wing it from there' or 'get a catchy domain name, pretend to do something useful with it, and get acquired by Yahoo'. The old guard that ended up being taken down were the legacy corporations that tried to ride the wave while refusing to let go of any of the practices that were completely incompatible with being able to operate in a new paradigm. Actually, now that I spelled it out, I get it. Good job, sorry for doubting you.
- Torien 7mo ago
  Logged in for the first time in years to say, I appreciate you leaving this up and being able to change your view. Thanks!
StableAlkyne 7mo ago
> a metaverse that no one wanted That's the thing though, there is interest in "metaverse" style programs. VRChat, the biggest one, got 80k concurrent users last month (all time peak) according to SteamDB. Seems low, but hardware is a limiting factor for them. What happened is Facebook's version of this was a corporatized, simplified, G-rated fraction of what its competition is. Despite being in a medium where the defining factor is the ability to look out the eyes of anything vaguely humanoid, you could only be a generic human who only exists from the waist up, devoid of almost any self expression beyond maybe accessories or retexturing. As a result, there was no audience: the people who already use VR aren't going to go to an inferior product. And the people who would buy a VR headset aren't going to waste their time on a ghost town.
- georgefrowny 7mo ago
  Indeed, the people who would like to spend hours and hours hanging out in the digital world like something out of Snow Crash are not generally the kind of people to want to hang out in a simulated corporate lobby under the watchful gaze of someone like Zuckerberg. I'm absolutely sure there is a massive market (or at least user base) for a metaverse but until spending more time in VR than reality is mainstream, the audience is the underground clubbers and kids behind the bike sheds of the digital world.
  - Duralias 7mo ago
    Until we reach the point where outside becomes ruined and hostile I do not think a metaverse has much attraction to your average person, I see that as the main reason as for why VR became MR and then just AR. Also you missed furries from your audience group, there is overlap but it is a pretty distinctive group that is actively drawn towards VR for creative expression.
    - kakacik 7mo ago
      Indeed, physical world, nature, mountains, beaches, human look-in-the-eyes interaction, breeze of fresh air on a hill you climbed and so on is something extremely important to humans. Some feel it more, some less but ie everybody recharges in nature, just not everybody is so connected with their own bodies to actually recognize it. I like a bit of gaming and VR seems like almost-there, but its just a gimmick in one's life, and for life quality purposes never should become more than fringe relax activity. And for corporate-privacy-destroying virtual spaces - they would have to pay me massive amounts to spend, unwillingly, any time there. Those are the last people who should be in charge of such place
      - mark_l_watson 7mo ago
        Indeed! Your comment is probably the most important in this thread. The Korean/German philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes a lot about losing humanity because of tech advances. I am retired so this is easier for me to do: For every hour each day I spend on tech (personal AI research, writing) I spend 90 minutes hiking with friends, playing games like Bridge, enjoying meals with my wife and friends, reading good literature and philosophy, etc. I worked for 50 years before retiring, but even working, I tried to balance human time vs. tech and work - often leaving 'money on the table' but it was worth it. Pardon an old man ranting, but I think so many people seem caught up in the wrong things.
bonesss 7mo ago
Zuckerberg runs a company beholden to its platform operators: Apple, Google, and Microsoft who dictate online advertising access. Metas investments into VR make abundant sense as an effort to capitalize on a market where Meta was leading, has mindshare, and owns the platform (Oculus). If the bet paid off, or pays off, it would create a sorely lacking competitive moat and potentially provide Enterprise inroads where Meta is otherwise a non-player. Apple went down the same road, they see the same potential profits. I don’t think either is guilty of contemporaneous dot-com-boom thinking or investments with regard to VR/AR. Carmack was on board, he remembers Pets.com too.
- jarjoura 7mo ago
  VR was never the endgame though. It was always AR, except, the "metaverse" bet assumed people were going to adopt AR in the same abundance that they adopted phones. It was a cool concept, when you were dreaming it up while taking a shower in the morning getting ready for work thinking about the next big idea. However, it's like those weird Uber/Lyft scooters that popped up in the 2010s. Those things were a cool concept too. However, we got to see right away that it was a terrible business idea for all kinds of reasons. It took Meta several years (decade +) and 10s of billions of dollars and layoffs to realize, AR was a terrible business idea. VR is a fun hobby though, and Oculus definitely owns that space.
  - KaiserPro 7mo ago
    > AR was a terrible business idea. I don't think they've learnt that. Orion, the "new" glasses should have shipped in 2020q4.
- chris_money202 7mo ago
  I always thought the AR/VR plays were just ways to collect human data to train humanoids, similar to what Tesla does with vision and their cars. Would align with recent reports of meta employees watching the videos coming off their sunglasses
- mark_l_watson 7mo ago
  I have had an Oculus 2 for many years and while I love it, I rarely spend more than an hour or two a month using it because time in VR competes with activities like walking outside getting fresh air and sun on my face or sitting with my wife or a friend having coffee, or spending time writing a book. I think we need more wonderful technology that is designed for brief high-value periods of use. A good example: I get huge value from using AI, but cumulatively I spend perhaps two to three hours a week using Claude or Gemini. Quality products that I appreciate but don't need to spend a lot of time with.
KaiserPro 7mo ago
Former facebook acquiree here. The metaverse is what happens when you let your leadership/product team convince you that the key to speed up what you want to deliver is to throw people at the problem, and not put any constraints on deliverables. The original plan for oculus is to establish a VR eco system that would have transitioned into AR glasses, allowing facebook to have a platform of its own. VR was/is a bit niche, because it required lots of expensive hardware, and there were limited games/uses. first logical step: remove the need for a high end PC, make the thing cheap. That drops one barrier to adoption: expense. The next one is, great I have this $400 device that does VR, but what can I actually _do_ on it? That means you need content and features. This is where it all turned to shit. Zuck looked at steam, and itunes and said: "make it so", and they started tapping up devs to make small games, and AAA to make big ones. But, its expensive to port games, and it takes time, why not buy studios that are making great games and get them to make more? so they bought a bunch of indie studios. Those studios had to fight to keep their devs, because facebook normally fires/rehires, forcing everyone to re-interview for their job. Games devs aren't really hired because they don't pass the technicals (Don't know why, given that games devs need to be good or the FPS drops like shit.) with all that upheaval, those games studios don't really produce extra games to sell. All the while a small team had been making a roblox clone. It was slow and a bit buggy, and you could make shitty games. During lockdown we all had a play. Needed a new generation of hardware to work properly, because it was a unity game with a bunch of hacks to allow custom maps and rules. Never mind, we are doing E N T E R P R I S E now. enter work rooms. Again a small initiative, which basically asked, can we make better VC if we are in VR? The answer is yes, yes you can, but selling it is hard. There were a lot of hard problems to solve, like needed to detect keyboards, how do you present your screen if you can see your computer? how can you do computer passthrough or virtual monitors in VR? Zuck saw this and jizzed his pants, so made it a priority. This meant the small team (probably less than 40) swelled to like 4000. Most of the people who moved were not games devs, or had ever worked in graphics/3d. This meant that loads of silly lessons had to be learnt in prod. Nothing was stable, everything was high friction, and no, there was no public API to allow you third parties to integrated into the app. For the longest time it took >5 minutes to join a VR meeting. Basically Zuck loves features, and cant understand that user experience is way way more important than features. He throws engineers at the problem which means that instead of solving product issues, they endup solving people issues.

Eisenstein 7mo ago

The dot com bust wasn't at all like that, though? What 'arose' were the players that had leadership with an actual plan besides 'launch IPO based on hype and wing it from there' or 'get a catchy domain name, pretend to do something useful with it, and get acquired by Yahoo'. The old guard that ended up being taken down were the legacy corporations that tried to ride the wave while refusing to let go of any of the practices that were completely incompatible with being able to operate in a new paradigm. Actually, now that I spelled it out, I get it. Good job, sorry for doubting you.

Torien 7mo ago
Logged in for the first time in years to say, I appreciate you leaving this up and being able to change your view. Thanks!

StableAlkyne 7mo ago

> a metaverse that no one wanted That's the thing though, there is interest in "metaverse" style programs. VRChat, the biggest one, got 80k concurrent users last month (all time peak) according to SteamDB. Seems low, but hardware is a limiting factor for them. What happened is Facebook's version of this was a corporatized, simplified, G-rated fraction of what its competition is. Despite being in a medium where the defining factor is the ability to look out the eyes of anything vaguely humanoid, you could only be a generic human who only exists from the waist up, devoid of almost any self expression beyond maybe accessories or retexturing. As a result, there was no audience: the people who already use VR aren't going to go to an inferior product. And the people who would buy a VR headset aren't going to waste their time on a ghost town.

georgefrowny 7mo ago
Indeed, the people who would like to spend hours and hours hanging out in the digital world like something out of Snow Crash are not generally the kind of people to want to hang out in a simulated corporate lobby under the watchful gaze of someone like Zuckerberg. I'm absolutely sure there is a massive market (or at least user base) for a metaverse but until spending more time in VR than reality is mainstream, the audience is the underground clubbers and kids behind the bike sheds of the digital world.
- Duralias 7mo ago
  Until we reach the point where outside becomes ruined and hostile I do not think a metaverse has much attraction to your average person, I see that as the main reason as for why VR became MR and then just AR. Also you missed furries from your audience group, there is overlap but it is a pretty distinctive group that is actively drawn towards VR for creative expression.
  - kakacik 7mo ago
    Indeed, physical world, nature, mountains, beaches, human look-in-the-eyes interaction, breeze of fresh air on a hill you climbed and so on is something extremely important to humans. Some feel it more, some less but ie everybody recharges in nature, just not everybody is so connected with their own bodies to actually recognize it. I like a bit of gaming and VR seems like almost-there, but its just a gimmick in one's life, and for life quality purposes never should become more than fringe relax activity. And for corporate-privacy-destroying virtual spaces - they would have to pay me massive amounts to spend, unwillingly, any time there. Those are the last people who should be in charge of such place
    - mark_l_watson 7mo ago
      Indeed! Your comment is probably the most important in this thread. The Korean/German philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes a lot about losing humanity because of tech advances. I am retired so this is easier for me to do: For every hour each day I spend on tech (personal AI research, writing) I spend 90 minutes hiking with friends, playing games like Bridge, enjoying meals with my wife and friends, reading good literature and philosophy, etc. I worked for 50 years before retiring, but even working, I tried to balance human time vs. tech and work - often leaving 'money on the table' but it was worth it. Pardon an old man ranting, but I think so many people seem caught up in the wrong things.

bonesss 7mo ago

Zuckerberg runs a company beholden to its platform operators: Apple, Google, and Microsoft who dictate online advertising access. Metas investments into VR make abundant sense as an effort to capitalize on a market where Meta was leading, has mindshare, and owns the platform (Oculus). If the bet paid off, or pays off, it would create a sorely lacking competitive moat and potentially provide Enterprise inroads where Meta is otherwise a non-player. Apple went down the same road, they see the same potential profits. I don’t think either is guilty of contemporaneous dot-com-boom thinking or investments with regard to VR/AR. Carmack was on board, he remembers Pets.com too.

jarjoura 7mo ago
VR was never the endgame though. It was always AR, except, the "metaverse" bet assumed people were going to adopt AR in the same abundance that they adopted phones. It was a cool concept, when you were dreaming it up while taking a shower in the morning getting ready for work thinking about the next big idea. However, it's like those weird Uber/Lyft scooters that popped up in the 2010s. Those things were a cool concept too. However, we got to see right away that it was a terrible business idea for all kinds of reasons. It took Meta several years (decade +) and 10s of billions of dollars and layoffs to realize, AR was a terrible business idea. VR is a fun hobby though, and Oculus definitely owns that space.
- KaiserPro 7mo ago
  > AR was a terrible business idea. I don't think they've learnt that. Orion, the "new" glasses should have shipped in 2020q4.
chris_money202 7mo ago
I always thought the AR/VR plays were just ways to collect human data to train humanoids, similar to what Tesla does with vision and their cars. Would align with recent reports of meta employees watching the videos coming off their sunglasses
mark_l_watson 7mo ago
I have had an Oculus 2 for many years and while I love it, I rarely spend more than an hour or two a month using it because time in VR competes with activities like walking outside getting fresh air and sun on my face or sitting with my wife or a friend having coffee, or spending time writing a book. I think we need more wonderful technology that is designed for brief high-value periods of use. A good example: I get huge value from using AI, but cumulatively I spend perhaps two to three hours a week using Claude or Gemini. Quality products that I appreciate but don't need to spend a lot of time with.

KaiserPro 7mo ago

Former facebook acquiree here. The metaverse is what happens when you let your leadership/product team convince you that the key to speed up what you want to deliver is to throw people at the problem, and not put any constraints on deliverables. The original plan for oculus is to establish a VR eco system that would have transitioned into AR glasses, allowing facebook to have a platform of its own. VR was/is a bit niche, because it required lots of expensive hardware, and there were limited games/uses. first logical step: remove the need for a high end PC, make the thing cheap. That drops one barrier to adoption: expense. The next one is, great I have this $400 device that does VR, but what can I actually _do_ on it? That means you need content and features. This is where it all turned to shit. Zuck looked at steam, and itunes and said: "make it so", and they started tapping up devs to make small games, and AAA to make big ones. But, its expensive to port games, and it takes time, why not buy studios that are making great games and get them to make more? so they bought a bunch of indie studios. Those studios had to fight to keep their devs, because facebook normally fires/rehires, forcing everyone to re-interview for their job. Games devs aren't really hired because they don't pass the technicals (Don't know why, given that games devs need to be good or the FPS drops like shit.) with all that upheaval, those games studios don't really produce extra games to sell. All the while a small team had been making a roblox clone. It was slow and a bit buggy, and you could make shitty games. During lockdown we all had a play. Needed a new generation of hardware to work properly, because it was a unity game with a bunch of hacks to allow custom maps and rules. Never mind, we are doing E N T E R P R I S E now. enter work rooms. Again a small initiative, which basically asked, can we make better VC if we are in VR? The answer is yes, yes you can, but selling it is hard. There were a lot of hard problems to solve, like needed to detect keyboards, how do you present your screen if you can see your computer? how can you do computer passthrough or virtual monitors in VR? Zuck saw this and jizzed his pants, so made it a priority. This meant the small team (probably less than 40) swelled to like 4000. Most of the people who moved were not games devs, or had ever worked in graphics/3d. This meant that loads of silly lessons had to be learnt in prod. Nothing was stable, everything was high friction, and no, there was no public API to allow you third parties to integrated into the app. For the longest time it took >5 minutes to join a VR meeting. Basically Zuck loves features, and cant understand that user experience is way way more important than features. He throws engineers at the problem which means that instead of solving product issues, they endup solving people issues.