4 ms·

Their last success was acquiring Instagram in 2012. Every new effort since then has been hemorrhaging money. They get away with it because they have two limitle

by paxys 8mo ago

Their last success was acquiring Instagram in 2012. Every new effort since then has been hemorrhaging money. They get away with it because they have two limitless money faucets in Facebook and Instagram, but their product strategy as a whole has been a disaster.

ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
It would be incredible to think that Mark Zuckerberg genuinely thought their Metaverse/VR investment was going to be akin to Xerox's bayarea PARC campus (developer of modern networking / GUI &c). I guess both were ultimately profit-negative financial disasters.
- jordanb 8mo ago
  Watching their demo video was the perfect encapsulation of "this was not made for users" I have ever seen. First of all the idea of hanging out in a digital world with Mark Zuckerberg is so bleak. I can't imagine a worse hang. But other than that, it was all about working in a digital office, being advertised to, etc. They had this scene where one of Zuck's definitely-real friends is excited about "this new street art" on the digital wall that jumps off the wall and they interact with it. Imagine having popup ads that jump up at you when you're walking (gliding?) down the street!
  - dasil003 8mo ago
    In other words they haven't really pushed the vision forward since the Jaws 19 hologram in Back To The Future 2.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    I guess they read William Gibson's 2007 novel Spook Country and tried to build that. It had virtual street art as a plot device. https://williamgibsonbooks.com/#books https://williamgibsonbooks.com/#books
- schrodinger 8mo ago
  It's easy to get caught up in your own hype when you're surrounded entirely by people who always tell you what you want to hear.
  - rubyn00bie 8mo ago
    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately… For years this has been said, and for most of us isn’t something we’ve been able to experience until recently. Yet, now we can see how chatbots have made sane folks lose their minds, by simply being too agreeable. I think it’s a grim look at what it’s like to be hyper wealthy. The odds that they’ve completely disassociated from reality, IMHO, have increased exponentially after seeing the effects on “normal” people. The only difference is us plebs, don’t have the resources to then bring our distorted view of reality to life.
  - chokma 8mo ago
    Maybe the sycophantic behavior of AI models comes from rich people having them build to behave the same as their personal yes-men. A person accustomed to never hearing "no" won't like a machine that tells them off.
- Esophagus4 8mo ago
  I guess he had nothing to lose by making those big bets really. He’s got one of the biggest free cash flow machines in the world, so he’d rather swing and miss than not swing and be left behind, given that with $200B top line, there is essentially no financial penalty for a swing and a miss. It does look goofy to have made such a big gamble on something as stupid as Metaverse in hindsight, though.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  I do think he had a point. He should just have put it on the slow burner. Not throw billions at it against the steady stream of technological improvement. I do think virtual interfaces will be a thing when the tech is ready. Not really ready player one style but more like what they have in the expanse for computer tech.
HDThoreaun 8mo ago
Meta ad spend increases 10% every year. Their products have had non stop continual successes for decades at this point. If fb and insta never changed and were solely relying on tailwind you could say they havent had any success, but this clearly is not true imo. Their family of apps have changed a lot, mostly for the worse imo, but it has led to massive increases in ad shows and spend per ad show.
- twelve40 8mo ago
  there are plenty of amazingly lucrative businesses that do really well, like online casinos, tobacco companies, etc. that happily milk their users and don't bother with improving human condition. You can call that "successful product strategy" i guess, but to me that's still pretty repulsive. You can also call this hyperbole, but i really am very much repulsed at this: increasing addictiveness for the weak minds to extract more revenue.
  - fn-mote 8mo ago
    We agree that the product is lucrative and the ethics are nonexistant. > increasing addictiveness for the weak minds This kind of statement is like saying only fools fall for spearphishing attacks. IME, there are lots of attacks on your attention, and it only takes one mistake. If you have not been targeted yet, it's just a matter of time. For example, look around here at the Factorio users. "It's just a fun game." Ok, but how many hours a week are you spending on it? Looks like an addiction to me. I know not everybody agrees with me, but when you are logging hundreds (thousands?) of hours on WoW, League, COD, ... it quacks like a duck.
- danny_codes 8mo ago
  They’ve gotten better at addiction-engineering. Like making super-cocaine, it’s not a good thing. Essentially they took a dubiously ethical business and ramped it into, “actively harmful to almost everyone”. Any reasonable country would ban half the ads that make it onto FB/Insta. FB themselves admit 10% of their ad traffic is literal scammers.
  - 8mo ago
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
mandeepj 8mo ago
> Their last success was acquiring Instagram in 2012. WhatsApp can be dubbed a success as well, and Oculus wasn't a flop. And, what does that tell you about the company? They can only acquire and integrate products. Why? Because Leetcode (LC). Fk LC, Hard!!!
roland35 8mo ago
I am not huge fan of Meta but I wouldn't dismiss them quite so much. I think reels is probably doing pretty well, and despite being cringeworthy FB itself is still going very strong. There are a lot of behind the scenes AI work improving their ads. There are absolutely a lot of high profile failures though, with the metaverse being #1 (along with the name change to boot!)

by paxys 8mo ago

ProllyInfamous 8mo ago

It would be incredible to think that Mark Zuckerberg genuinely thought their Metaverse/VR investment was going to be akin to Xerox's bayarea PARC campus (developer of modern networking / GUI &c). I guess both were ultimately profit-negative financial disasters.

jordanb 8mo ago
Watching their demo video was the perfect encapsulation of "this was not made for users" I have ever seen. First of all the idea of hanging out in a digital world with Mark Zuckerberg is so bleak. I can't imagine a worse hang. But other than that, it was all about working in a digital office, being advertised to, etc. They had this scene where one of Zuck's definitely-real friends is excited about "this new street art" on the digital wall that jumps off the wall and they interact with it. Imagine having popup ads that jump up at you when you're walking (gliding?) down the street!
- dasil003 8mo ago
  In other words they haven't really pushed the vision forward since the Jaws 19 hologram in Back To The Future 2.
- nradov 8mo ago
  I guess they read William Gibson's 2007 novel Spook Country and tried to build that. It had virtual street art as a plot device. https://williamgibsonbooks.com/#books https://williamgibsonbooks.com/#books
schrodinger 8mo ago
It's easy to get caught up in your own hype when you're surrounded entirely by people who always tell you what you want to hear.
- rubyn00bie 8mo ago
  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately… For years this has been said, and for most of us isn’t something we’ve been able to experience until recently. Yet, now we can see how chatbots have made sane folks lose their minds, by simply being too agreeable. I think it’s a grim look at what it’s like to be hyper wealthy. The odds that they’ve completely disassociated from reality, IMHO, have increased exponentially after seeing the effects on “normal” people. The only difference is us plebs, don’t have the resources to then bring our distorted view of reality to life.
- chokma 8mo ago
  Maybe the sycophantic behavior of AI models comes from rich people having them build to behave the same as their personal yes-men. A person accustomed to never hearing "no" won't like a machine that tells them off.
Esophagus4 8mo ago
I guess he had nothing to lose by making those big bets really. He’s got one of the biggest free cash flow machines in the world, so he’d rather swing and miss than not swing and be left behind, given that with $200B top line, there is essentially no financial penalty for a swing and a miss. It does look goofy to have made such a big gamble on something as stupid as Metaverse in hindsight, though.
wolvoleo 8mo ago
I do think he had a point. He should just have put it on the slow burner. Not throw billions at it against the steady stream of technological improvement. I do think virtual interfaces will be a thing when the tech is ready. Not really ready player one style but more like what they have in the expanse for computer tech.

HDThoreaun 8mo ago

Meta ad spend increases 10% every year. Their products have had non stop continual successes for decades at this point. If fb and insta never changed and were solely relying on tailwind you could say they havent had any success, but this clearly is not true imo. Their family of apps have changed a lot, mostly for the worse imo, but it has led to massive increases in ad shows and spend per ad show.

twelve40 8mo ago
there are plenty of amazingly lucrative businesses that do really well, like online casinos, tobacco companies, etc. that happily milk their users and don't bother with improving human condition. You can call that "successful product strategy" i guess, but to me that's still pretty repulsive. You can also call this hyperbole, but i really am very much repulsed at this: increasing addictiveness for the weak minds to extract more revenue.
- fn-mote 8mo ago
  We agree that the product is lucrative and the ethics are nonexistant. > increasing addictiveness for the weak minds This kind of statement is like saying only fools fall for spearphishing attacks. IME, there are lots of attacks on your attention, and it only takes one mistake. If you have not been targeted yet, it's just a matter of time. For example, look around here at the Factorio users. "It's just a fun game." Ok, but how many hours a week are you spending on it? Looks like an addiction to me. I know not everybody agrees with me, but when you are logging hundreds (thousands?) of hours on WoW, League, COD, ... it quacks like a duck.
danny_codes 8mo ago
They’ve gotten better at addiction-engineering. Like making super-cocaine, it’s not a good thing. Essentially they took a dubiously ethical business and ramped it into, “actively harmful to almost everyone”. Any reasonable country would ban half the ads that make it onto FB/Insta. FB themselves admit 10% of their ad traffic is literal scammers.
- 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

mandeepj 8mo ago

> Their last success was acquiring Instagram in 2012. WhatsApp can be dubbed a success as well, and Oculus wasn't a flop. And, what does that tell you about the company? They can only acquire and integrate products. Why? Because Leetcode (LC). Fk LC, Hard!!!

roland35 8mo ago

I am not huge fan of Meta but I wouldn't dismiss them quite so much. I think reels is probably doing pretty well, and despite being cringeworthy FB itself is still going very strong. There are a lot of behind the scenes AI work improving their ads. There are absolutely a lot of high profile failures though, with the metaverse being #1 (along with the name change to boot!)