[HN Gopher] Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO ___________________________________________________________________ Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO Author : coloneltcb Score : 389 points Date : 2022-06-01 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com) | nowherebeen wrote: | Seems like everyone including Zuckerberg's most loyal lieutenants | are abandoning this sinking ship. | pinewurst wrote: | She'll rematerialize running for the next available CA Senate | seat. | the_watcher wrote: | This crossed my mind as well. | dang wrote: | Url changed from | https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10166258399565177 to | something that's not behind a login wall. If there's a better | URL, we can change it again. | option wrote: | Seems like great news for Meta. | amelius wrote: | > Mark's belief that people would put their real selves online to | connect with other people was so mesmerizing that we stood by | that door and talked for the rest of the night. | | Real selves, ha! More like jealousy (and other negative emotions) | evoking versions of selves. | LargeWu wrote: | One might argue that _is_ many peoples ' real version of | themself. | hihihihi1234 wrote: | Some people experience so much of their reality through a | screen that I wonder if maybe their online version is | effectively their "real" self. | samwillis wrote: | I wander what this means for Nick Clegg, and how much of his | promotion to be "the same level" as Sheryl and Mark was related | to her intention to leave. | | He obviously isn't a COO, but then Facebook has an existential | legislative risk. So maybe that's the indication, they need to be | co-run by a policy leader, and opps is a solved problem. | | https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/16/nick-cleg... | | > "[Mark] added that the new role would put Clegg "at the level" | of himself and Sheryl Sandberg" | dmead wrote: | Reading your comment i thought this was going to be a different | nick clegg than the one from British politics, but it wasn't! | SilverBirch wrote: | The strategy seems to be "if we put this potato in a suit no | one can really get too mad, and if they do we'll just bake | him". | [deleted] | spinn3 wrote: | Well, more time to "Lean In" to activities like being in a | relationship a guy that systematically covered up the sexual | harassment of his female employees, I suppose? | | https://www.wsj.com/articles/sandberg-facebook-kotick-activi... | fnordpiglet wrote: | Yeah it's almost certainly related to this. Timing is too | close. | wly_cdgr wrote: | This reads like a love letter to her work husband | KaiserPro wrote: | That does explain a few things. | | Sandberg has been exceptionally quiet in the last few months, and | given that the succession underneath her has been horribly | bungled, I suspect she's chosen this time to bugger off. | | I'm not sure what this means, but I hope Sandberg's style of | disingenuous personal "brand" disappears with her. Just say what | you mean and give us time back. | atlgator wrote: | "Sheryl Sandberg Leaning Out of Facebook" would have been a | better headline. | fnordpiglet wrote: | Has it been a little more than a month since it was revealed she | used Facebook employees to protect her boyfriend at the time from | media scrutiny? They were launching an investigation on April 21, | 2022 | formerkrogemp wrote: | I was going to write a long post. But, good riddance. | jmyeet wrote: | Facebook has a view of the world on two axes: medium and | audience. Audience here means if it's 1 to 1 (eg DMing) or 1 to | 1,000,000 (eg Twitter). Format is seen as a progression: text -> | audio -> video -> VR -> AR. | | I personally am skeptical that VR will ever be anything other | than a niche and there are lots of reasons for this. Most notably | after 10-15 years it's still yet to find that "killer app". | | My interpretation of this situation is that Facebook is | directionless but this began years ago. | | This was most evident when Facebook decided to try and moderate | objective truth online in response to the misinformation that | really went mainstream in the 2016 election and since only | ballooned further. It's a noble-sounding goal but a thankless one | that you will never succeed in. People will disagree on what it's | true. Additionally, Facebook's DNA is to optimize for | interactions and nothing generates interactions better than | misinformation, hate and preaching to the choir. | | The next misstep was to merge the online messaging platforms, | probably to challenge the supremacy of iMessage. Nobody was happy | about this. People don't actually want interoperability between | FB Messenger, WhatsApp and IG Messaging. | | Beyond this IG lost its streamlined production direction in | service of propping up other products. | | The Metaverse is just the latest iteration of an idea wildly | hoping to find a product market fit. Many of us have read Snow | Crash and VR is a common theme in sci-fi but I think it's just | not going mainstream for a long time if ever. | | So we can only read the tea leaves here about why Sandberg left. | Chris Cox famously left (and later came back) and used words that | seemed to indicate he wasn't energized about the company's | direction (when that direction was fighting misinformation). | | Sandberg obviously has generational wealth at this point so | doesn't need to work. Is this departure a judgement on the | direction of the Metaverse? It's really hard to say. But Sandberg | is widely respected so this isn't a good outcome. It's even more | interesting that she won't be replaced. I do wonder what the | organizational impacts of this are. | mjirv wrote: | > It's even more interesting that she won't be replaced. | | She's being replaced by Javier Olivan, who has been at FB | forever and is the head of their Growth org. | wly_cdgr wrote: | My guess is she wants to succeed where Hillary failed and needs | to distance herself from Zuck in preparation for 2028/2032, | particularly after the effect the 2020 election and Jan 6 had on | Zuck's and FB's public image | smt88 wrote: | I would take the opposite side of this bet. I don't think | she'll run for president. She has too many skeletons in her | closet, especially related to protecting Bobby Kotick. | nostromo wrote: | She seems squeaky clean compared to the Clintons, Trumps, and | Bidens. | smt88 wrote: | The key word is "seems". | | She may _be_ more clean than they are, but they convinced | their voters that they 're ethical people -- or at least | ethical enough. And all of them (except Trump) started with | a clean slate in their first election, before running for | president. | | Sandberg is starting from a bad spot. She has all the | liabilities of Clinton without the decades of campaigning | to give her a base of support. | shuckles wrote: | I am always deeply saddened by the fact that so much of our | digital social infrastructure was built by a company with little | humanity. How many interactions have been enhanced, as opposed to | monetized, by Facebook technology? My understanding is Sheryl was | a supporter of this numbers based approach to the business, and | maybe this will be a change for the better. | madrox wrote: | I'm not convinced anyone else would have done anything | different. I don't believe this is a case of "the wrong people | in the right place" since any unregulated massive opportunity | in history has gone this way. Saying the wrong people were in | charge robs us of learning for next time. More useful to say | that this is a lesson in human nature and we should prepare for | the next Facebook accordingly. | shuckles wrote: | Not sure I believe this. Instagram could've conceivably | killed Facebook a decade ago if they'd chosen not to sell. | Reminds me of Steve Jobs talking about Microsoft bringing | about the dark ages of desktop computing: | https://512pixels.net/2010/05/the-desktop-computer- | industry-.... | 112358throw123 wrote: | nso95 wrote: | uh | gkoberger wrote: | I hadn't seen this before today, but NY Times claims that around | a year ago (after the Jan 6th insurrection), Zuckerberg and | Sandberg started to go their separate ways. | | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/business/mark-zuckerberg-... | | "The pair continued their twice-weekly meetings, but Mr. | Zuckerberg took over more of the areas once under her purview. He | made the final call on issues surrounding Mr. Trump's spread of | hate speech and dangerous misinformation, decisions Ms. Sandberg | often lobbied against or told allies she felt uncomfortable with. | Mr. Zuckerberg oversaw efforts in Washington to fend off | regulations and had forged a friendly relationship with Mr. | Trump." | dereg wrote: | Sandberg has shown herself to be a true champion of moderation. | One of her fine achievements at Facebook was to mobilize a team | of enterprising Facebook employees to suppress allegations of | harassment made against her then boyfriend, Bobby Kotick, from | the news. | lalos wrote: | Sandberg coming back as CEO when Zuck takes a break from leading | the VR effort will be textbook Board of Directors. | sealthedeal wrote: | This is the best comment so far. From my very limited knowledge | though its almost impossible to remove Zuck from the company | though. | lalos wrote: | If VR doesn't pay off, there might be a Ballmer/MS situation. | Zuck leaving might boost the stock and at the end of the day, | he is just one big investor (with voting power). | bmitc wrote: | Must be nice to retire a billionaire, making money off of other | people's data, and getting out when the writing's on the wall. | htrp wrote: | Javier Olivan, the company's chief growth officer, will take over | as COO this fall, a spokesperson told CNBC. Sandberg will | continue to serve on Meta's board of directors. | (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/01/facebook-coo-sheryl-sandberg...) | lvl102 wrote: | I think Sheryl is going out near the top here. She literally rode | this generation of SV wave from the beginning. From a Larry | Summers' protege to one of the most influential executives on the | planet. Despite all the negatives associated with Facebook, I | think she was the best thing to happen to FB and Mark Zuckerberg. | vineyardmike wrote: | > She literally rode this generation of SV wave from the | beginning. | | > she was the best thing to happen to FB and Mark Zuckerberg. | | Or -hear me out- the person most influential in current SV | business is not the best thing to happen to a (very young, | impressionable) founder trying to grow his business. Pre-Sheryl | ads were businesses having fb pages and advertising when your | friend bought a product (very social-based). Post-Sheryl ads | tracked you everywhere and learned about you. | hownottowrite wrote: | Which version actually worked? | seydor wrote: | both. Otherwise, was there an overall increase in | consumption? | vineyardmike wrote: | We can never know what could've been. Clearly the method in | use makes money. A lot of it. | | But FB and Marks reputation have never been worse. He | probably would be rich-enough either way. | gowld wrote: | Every free product did that, not just FB. | JKCalhoun wrote: | > Despite all the negatives associated with Facebook, I think | she was the best thing to happen to FB and Mark Zuckerberg. | | Yeah, my impression has been that she has provided cover for FB | and Mark Zuckerberg. | luckydata wrote: | I think she was simultaneously the best and worst thing to | happen to FB. Some of the issues of the company are squarely at | her feet. The revenue org is a huge clusterf** of mismanagement | and improvisation that should have tamed years ago. When I was | there a couple years ago I wasn't impressed at all by how it | all worked and was wondering if this "beautiful journey" post | was about to happen. | lbhdc wrote: | It seems like the article link requires a FB account. Can anyone | paste the contents or share a link that doesn't require a | facebook account? | dhd415 wrote: | I think it depends on how many FB posts you've viewed already. | It didn't require a login for me until I refreshed twice. | paxys wrote: | It does not require a FB account. You can see it from an | incognito window just fine. | celsoazevedo wrote: | It redirects me to the login page, even with incognito. Even | the Wayback Machine is getting redirected: | https://i.imgur.com/84UDbjG.png | | Facebook and Instagram often do this when they don't like | your IP (a problem with CG-NAT, VPN, etc). | hollerith wrote: | I tried that just now, and got a "you must log in" page. | bornfreddy wrote: | Interesting, it works for me... Maybe try in a different | browser to avoid supercookies / fingerprinting? | lbhdc wrote: | I tried that, and got a log in page. I also tried to get | archive.is to scrape it, and it also got a log in page. | rockemsockem wrote: | It doesn't. I didn't login to anything. | tsechin wrote: | Well... If your rocket ship is going down, don't ask which | parachute. | bozhark wrote: | You have to login to read this? | | Strange. | [deleted] | WaxProlix wrote: | I'm not logged in and read it just fine. | [deleted] | my69thaccount wrote: | I can view it without a login. Here's a plaintext copy for | people who have problems. https://pastebin.com/NjhMJThB | sp332 wrote: | The post privacy is set to "global", and I did not have to log | in to read it. Try a private tab? | dkarl wrote: | I agree, pretty bizarre for a public announcement. | TedShiller wrote: | And? | my69thaccount wrote: | How self-important do you need to be to stretch "I quit" into | 1500 words? | KaiserPro wrote: | thats the Sandberg(tm) brand. | qgin wrote: | I mean, many people would consider her leaving to be an | important event. For all intents and purposes, she ran one of | the largest internet platforms for 14 years. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | 1500 words isn't that many words. | | Most people when they send their farewell company email is like | 500 words. | | She'd been at the company (at the top) for >10 years. | | What do you expect? | my69thaccount wrote: | Since you read it all, can you tell me if there is anything | in it aside from meaningless corporate platitudes? Is the | expectation that more senior=more platitudes since nobody | reads them and just looks at how long they are anyway? | efrank02 wrote: | She's one of the most powerful women in the world. Not self | important just important. | [deleted] | sealthedeal wrote: | Today, I am sharing the news that after 14 years, I will be | leaving Meta. When I first met Mark, I was not really looking for | a new job - and I could have never predicted how meeting him | would change my life. We were at a holiday party at Daniel L | Rosensweig's house. I was introduced to Mark as I walked in the | door, and we started talking about his vision for Facebook. I had | tried The Facebook, as it was first called, but still thought the | internet was a largely anonymous place to search for funny | pictures. Mark's belief that people would put their real selves | online to connect with other people was so mesmerizing that we | stood by that door and talked for the rest of the night. I told | Dan later that I got a new life at that party but never got a | single drink, so he owed me one. Many months later, after | countless - and I mean countless - dinners and conversations with | Mark, he offered me this job. It was chaotic at first. I would | schedule a meeting with an engineer for nine o'clock only to find | that they would not show up. They assumed I meant nine p.m., | because who would come to work at nine a.m.? We had some ads, but | they were not performing well, and most advertisers I met wanted | to take over our homepage like The Incredible Hulk movie had on | MySpace. One was so angry when I said no to her homepage idea | that she slammed her fist on the table, walked out of the room, | and never returned. That first summer, Mark realized that he had | never had a chance to travel, so he went away for a month, | leaving me and Matt Cohler in charge without a ton of direction | and almost no ability to contact him. It seemed crazy - but it | was a display of trust I have never forgotten. When I was | considering joining Facebook, my late husband, Dave, counseled me | not to jump in and immediately try to resolve every substantive | issue with Mark, as we would face so many over time. Instead, I | should set up the right process with him. So, on the way in, I | asked Mark for three things - that we would sit next to each | other, that he would meet with me one-on-one every week, and that | in those meetings he would give me honest feedback when he | thought I messed something up. Mark said yes to all three but | added that the feedback would have to be mutual. To this day, he | has kept those promises. We still sit together (OK, not through | COVID), meet one-on-one every week, and the feedback is immediate | and real. Sitting by Mark's side for these 14 years has been the | honor and privilege of a lifetime. Mark is a true visionary and a | caring leader. He sometimes says that we grew up together, and we | have. He was just 23 and I was already 38 when we met, but | together we have been through the massive ups and downs of | running this company, as well as his marriage to the magnificent | Priscilla, the sorrow of their miscarriages and the joy of their | childbirths, the sudden loss of Dave, my engagement to Tom, and | so much more. In the critical moments of my life, in the highest | highs and in the depths of true lows, I have never had to turn to | Mark, because he was already there. When I joined Facebook, I had | a two-year-old son and a six-month-old daughter. I did not know | if this was the right time for a new and demanding role. The | messages were everywhere that women - and I - could not be both a | leader and a good mother, but I wanted to give it a try. Once I | started, I realized that to see my children before they went to | sleep, I had to leave the office at 5:30 p.m., which was when | work was just getting going for many of my new colleagues. In my | previous role at Google, there were enough people and buildings | that leaving early wasn't noticed, but Facebook was a small | startup and there was nowhere to hide. More out of necessity than | bravery, I found my nerve and walked out early anyway. Then, | supported by Mark, I found my voice to admit this publicly and | then talk about the challenges women face in the workplace. My | hope was to make this a bit easier for others and help more women | believe they can and should lead. I am beyond grateful to the | thousands of brilliant, dedicated people at Meta with whom I have | had the privilege of working over the last 14 years. Every day | someone does something that stops me in my tracks and reminds me | how lucky I am to be surrounded by such remarkable colleagues. | This team is filled with exceptionally talented people who have | poured their hearts and minds into building products that have | had a profound impact on the world. It's because of this team - | past and present - that more than three billion people use our | products to keep in touch and share their experiences. More than | 200 million businesses use them to create virtual storefronts, | communicate with customers, and grow. Billions of dollars have | been raised for causes people believe in. Behind each of these | statistics is a story. Friends who would have lost touch but | didn't. Families that stayed in contact despite being separated | by oceans. Communities that have rallied together. | Entrepreneurial people - especially women and others who have | faced obstacles and discrimination - who have turned their ideas | into successful businesses. Last week, a friend saw a post about | a mutual friend of ours having a baby and told me that she | remembers how before Instagram, she would have missed this | moment. When the women in Lean In's global Circles community | couldn't meet in person, they used Facebook to encourage each | other and share advice for navigating work and life during the | pandemic. At an International Women's Day lunch, a woman told me | that her Facebook birthday fundraiser generated enough money to | provide shelter for two women experiencing domestic abuse. Just | last month, I heard about how in India, the Self Employed Women's | Association connects over WhatsApp to organize and increase their | collective bargaining power. I've loved traveling the world | (physically and virtually) to meet small business owners and hear | their stories - like Zuzanna Sielicka Kalczynska in Poland, who | started a business with her sister selling cuddly stuffed animals | that make white noise to sooth crying babies. They began with a | single Facebook post in 2014 and have gone on to sell in more | than 20 countries and build a workforce mostly made up of moms | like them. The debate around social media has changed beyond | recognition since those early days. To say it hasn't always been | easy is an understatement. But it should be hard. The products we | make have a huge impact, so we have the responsibility to build | them in a way that protects privacy and keeps people safe. Just | as I believe wholeheartedly in our mission, our industry, and the | overwhelmingly positive power of connecting people, I and the | dedicated people of Meta have felt our responsibilities deeply. I | know that the extraordinary team at Meta will continue to work | tirelessly to rise to these challenges and keep making our | company and our community better. I also know that our platforms | will continue to be an engine of growth for the businesses around | the world that rely on us. When I took this job in 2008, I hoped | I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it | is time for me to write the next chapter of my life. I am not | entirely sure what the future will bring - I have learned no one | ever is. But I know it will include focusing more on my | foundation and philanthropic work, which is more important to me | than ever given how critical this moment is for women. And as Tom | and I get married this summer, parenting our expanded family of | five children. Over the next few months, Mark and I will | transition my direct reports and I will leave the company this | fall. I still believe as strongly as ever in our mission, and I | am honored that I will continue to serve on Meta's board of | directors. I am so immensely proud of everything this team has | achieved. The businesses we've helped and the business we've | built. The culture we've nurtured together. And I'm especially | proud that this is a company where many, many exceptional women | and people from diverse backgrounds have risen through our ranks | and become leaders - both in our company and in leadership roles | elsewhere. Thank you to the colleagues who inspire me every day | with their commitment to our mission, to our partners around the | world who have enabled us to build a business that serves their | businesses, and especially to Mark for giving me this opportunity | and being one of the best friends anyone could ever have. | sgt wrote: | If you stare at this text without blinking while rapidly | rocking back and forth in your chair, you actually start seeing | Zuckerberg's face. | quickthrower2 wrote: | I am not sure what to make of this wall. Is it copypasta? | [deleted] | cedricd wrote: | That's pretty surprising. I know that there has been tons of | controversy swirling around the company the past few years, but | things have seemed relatively quiet lately, other than their | recent bad revenue growth. | | Do people here think this is a shakeup at the company or that she | legitimately wanted to do something else? | tempsy wrote: | Is it really? I don't think it is. | | Pre-Trump era she was more the public face of Facebook than | even Zuck. Then when the Cambridge Analytica scandal basically | did a 180 on the entire reputation of the company she | effectively disappeared from the public eye. | lovecg wrote: | There could be other reasons she stepped back around then. | Her husband suddenly and tragically passed away - it's not a | mystery if one's life trajectory completely changes after an | event like this. | tempsy wrote: | ok sure but that was clearly one of them. | | pretty clear that she did not want to be the face of a | controversial company given that she often leveraged her | role to talk about being a woman exec in tech eg "Lean In" | and that all but disappeared when the perception of the | company completely changed. | cedricd wrote: | Yeah. I suppose I mean that she's been disappeared for the | public eye for a while, so why leave now? My guess isn't that | maybe she's lost too much influence and just doesn't find the | job interesting anymore. | tempsy wrote: | I mean hard to leave a job where you're getting paid | hundreds of millions. | bornfreddy wrote: | Does that still matter the second year and after that? In | other words, is there a difference between having 100m | and 200m? I would assume you can afford pretty much the | same things with both of the amounts... (no first-hand | experience) | skinnymuch wrote: | Yes. Wildly rich people are incredibly greedy? Wildly | rich people seem to care about more money far more than | someone making low 6 figures. | | Neoliberalism is the most popular ideology by far in the | world. Something that is tightly roped into more and more | money and greed being important. Look at how Howard | Schultz, Bezos, Musk, and all the other rich people in | those companies are reacting to unions. It's as if them | losing 10% of their insane wealth is the end of the | world. | | Hopefully people can think more like you. The world would | be a better place. | tempsy wrote: | sure it does | minimaxir wrote: | It's possible this announcement was intentionally timed against | the media-consuming Depp/Heard trial verdict announcement in an | attempt to bury the news. | | Meta stock went down a few points immediately after the | announcement. | rockinghigh wrote: | These moves are prepared months in advance. I'm not sure why | you would link an unrelated trial about a movie star to the | announcement. Sheryl is a billionaire, she probably wants to | take time off. | minimaxir wrote: | _Prepared_ months in advance, but there 's some flexibility | on the exact timing of the announcement. | | EDIT: Apparently this was not actually prepared months in | advance. | | > I'm told that Sheryl Sandberg notified Mark Zuckerberg that | she would step down over the weekend | | https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1532100449095933952 | guerrilla wrote: | > I'm not sure why you would link an unrelated trial about a | movie star to the announcement. | | They told you why, to bury the news, which they all have an | incentive to do. If it wasn't the trial verdict (which is | dominating the news), they could have waited until something | else to displace it. News outlets have finite space and time | and the public has a finite attention span, not too hard to | take advantage of that. | failTide wrote: | Within ~30 minutes of the verdict - I'd say that's likely. I | wonder if there's any other bad news announcements happening | right about now. | lupire wrote: | There's always something else in the news. | | COO leaving isn't something that can be ignored. She'll still | be leaving tomorrow. | StevePerkins wrote: | She's not leaving until the fall. Of course the timing of the | announcement was deliberate, lol. | iLoveOncall wrote: | Yeah, because people that invest heavily in the stock market | are the same people that read about celebrities in Closer. | coastflow wrote: | The Washington Post is covering the trial heavily, as the | defamation suit resulted as a response to an opinion- | editorial that Heard wrote in The Washington Post (the trial | is in Virginia because that is where the servers and printers | of the WaPost are located). | mike00632 wrote: | Reading this comment is how I found it that there was a verdict | in that trial. | cokeandpepsi wrote: | the COO of facebook stepping down isn't a major event outside | of some niche circles , if anything it's announced today | because it's the 1st of the month | KaiserPro wrote: | if you read some of the leaked documents from FB, I strongly | suspect you'd revise this opinion. | | When have you ever seen FB act in such a quick, noiseless and | effective way? | | its a 130k people, and Sandberg is the head of the chattiest | part of it. Not only that there is Boz who appears to want to | not only subsume the CTO position but also COO (see dinner | comments) | | TL;DR: | | FB is far to big and uncoordinated to manage something like | this. | i_have_an_idea wrote: | It is said rats are the first to flee a sinking ship | dredmorbius wrote: | Related: https://allthatsinteresting.com/thomas-midgley-jr | waynesonfire wrote: | She signed up for fb not meta | bborud wrote: | My thoughts on Meta and the whole Zuckerverse thing is still | "yeah, I think I'll sit this one out". I really don't want one | of those Facehuggers strapped to my face. | truthwhisperer wrote: | SilverBirch wrote: | I think it's really deserving of praise that Sheryl managed to | join Facebook in 2008, joining right as it was clear Facebook | would become a behemoth. She then spent 14 years helping to steer | a young Mark Zuckerberg through some of the most immoral, | damaging and discrediting decisions a company can make. Now, at | the absolutely peak of Facebook, where it's losing users, it's | reputation is so bad it literally had to change it's name and | "pivot", now she steps aside. | | "To the victims of genocides organised on my platform, to the | little girls who self-harmed looking at photos on our platform, | to the businesses we destroyed through our arbitrary and | capricious policy changes, my job is done here, it's been an | honor" | miketery wrote: | She also personally approved an anti-semetic smear campaign | against Soros, because his trust gave money to some non-profit | that were critical of facebook. | rr808 wrote: | Whatever you think of FB politics (which I'm not sure how much | influence she has), ops wise she has done an outstanding job at | FB to make it run. | my69thaccount wrote: | What are you talking about? She is the face of the Cambridge | Analytica scandal. | marcinzm wrote: | And Facebook/Meta has come out of all that with even more | revenue than before. I call that a business success even if | not an ethical success. | [deleted] | piva00 wrote: | So an outstanding job just requires business to flourish, | doesn't matter the means? I really don't agree with that. | atourgates wrote: | "Sitting by Mark's side for these 14 years has been the honor and | privilege of a lifetime. [...] In the critical moments of my | life, in the highest highs and in the depths of true lows, I have | never had to turn to Mark, because he was already there." | | If this is an accurate reflection of her experience, I don't | expect it's a side of Mark Zuckerberg most of us imagine exists. | ralph84 wrote: | Or it's a nice way of saying he's a micromanager. | dylan604 wrote: | kind of reads like a stepford wife waking up | Trasmatta wrote: | For real, it almost read like a thinly veiled burn on Mark to | me. Like, "give me some space Mark, you don't need to be up | in my business constantly". | Petersipoi wrote: | I think you're both choosing to believe the reality you | want to be true, as opposed to the one that actually is. To | interpret her comment they way both of you are doing seems | like reaching at best, and malicious at worst. I am no fan | of FB or Zuck, but come on. | SSLy wrote: | Veiled comments in departure announcements are the way | the executive class communicates about their peers to the | outside world. | gkoberger wrote: | I'm no Zuckerberg fan, but I imagine being in his inner circle | is probably a very good experience. | | I fundamentally and vehemently disagree with his goals and the | effect Facebook has on the world, but (outside of the early | years) I haven't heard anything toxic about him as an | executive. | baobob wrote: | > I'm no Zuckerberg fan, but I imagine being in his inner | circle is probably a very good experience. | | That experience is clearly taking its toll on Randi | Zuckerberg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp0diaVLPrQ | oofbey wrote: | That's a surprisingly balanced position. When you say he's | not toxic, do you mean that he doesn't yell or act sexist? Or | that he's actually an honest, upfront businessperson? Because | things like systematically lying about privacy policies, or | gaslighting the world about net neutrality / "Free Basics' | were neither early in his career nor deserving of any | respect. | gkoberger wrote: | I mean specifically the way he acts toward people inside | his company, especially those at the executive level. | qgin wrote: | People at her level don't work for 14 years with someone they | don't have a good relationship with. | bambax wrote: | > _I have never had to turn to Mark, because he was already | there_ | | I've not read anything (else?) Mrs Sandberg has (or hasn't) | written, but this turn of phrase has a "professional" feel & | taste. It's contrived. It's not something you would say about | someone truly dear to you, your best friend, your parents, etc. | | Maybe your dog. | Miraste wrote: | In fairness, high-level departure statements are carefully | scrubbed to remove any genuine feeling or humanity. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Or the guy on your couch? | jrochkind1 wrote: | When you saw only one set of tracking cookies, it was then that | Mark Zuckerberg was carrying you. | navbaker wrote: | I feel like there needs to be a hyper-specific term for when | the CEO of a social media company personally directs the ads | targeted to you based off what he observes of your behavior | by shoulder surfing your internet browsing. | notpachet wrote: | God dammit you made me spit out my coffee. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | You win today's Internet(tm). | jeffwask wrote: | Bravo | rattray wrote: | For others who didn't get the reference, it's a Christian | poem called "footprints in the sand": | | > When you saw only one set of footprints, | | > It was then that I carried you. | | https://www.onlythebible.com/Poems/Footprints-in-the-Sand- | Po... | baobob wrote: | It's curious how gentle the transition for many companies | from powerhouse to irrelevance is in the common perception. | To realize they're already at the point where intelligent | ridicule supplants impassioned critique kinda blows my mind, | and as far as I can tell you're not wrong. | jrochkind1 wrote: | Honestly, I just thought Sandberg was laying it on a little | thick with "I have never had to turn to Mark, because he | was already there." | | But this is probably my most upvoted HN comment ever, which | mostly just makes me ashamed. | dylan604 wrote: | This needs to be printed on posters, made into cross stitch, | and all of the other various ways people have this hanging in | their homes. well played | bdcravens wrote: | What a coincidence - wherever I go on the Internet, high or | low, Mark Zuckerberg('s business) is already there. | romanhn wrote: | Having spent a couple of years at Facebook, I was honestly | surprised by how different Zuckerberg is vs the outside | perception. Now, I wasn't part of his inner circle or whatever, | but in his weekly Q&As he came off very thoughtful, well- | rounded, human, at times opinionated, and willing to engage on | any topic. He fought to keep the weekly sessions going despite | the leaks, something Google gave up on as I understand. Zuck | has his faults, but a robotic, non-empathetic humanoid he is | not. He struck me as a strong introvert that over time got | comfortable communicating with his growing organization. I | don't think he's ever gotten comfortable communicating with the | rest of the world (and admitted as much). Ironic that he's in | charge of a communication service. | Firmwarrior wrote: | I hate Facebook more than most people, but I have to admit | that I can believe this. | | I noticed that the news always seems to go out of its way to | find inhuman-looking badly-tinted photos of him making | strange expressions. Lately he's become something of a | scapegoat IMO, probably because an introverted billionaire | with some creepy tendencies/background makes such an easy | target. | philjohn wrote: | Well, and Facebook kind of hurt the media in a pretty big | way with people getting their news from them, and other | social media. | the_watcher wrote: | Completely agree with this, matches my experience as well. | farmerstan wrote: | If you listen to Lex Friedman, he said the thing that surprised | him the most about mark zuckerberg when he met him was his | overwhelming humanity and compassion. He said that part of him | never comes through the media, but when he interacted with him | he said it was undeniable how humane and compassionate he was. | bspear wrote: | I'm usually skeptical of corporate BS, but I imagine they did | have a strong relationship. 14-year stints are very rare, esp. | for people that have plenty of options knocking on the door | cma wrote: | I dont know if im interpretting this right, but this seems | like she is leaving immediately just a few weeks after it was | clear her next vesting tranches of options/equity etc. were | heavily devalued or worthless as the impact on them from the | privacy stuff was possibly outdone with the broader tech | decline? | the_watcher wrote: | What I read was that she will be leaving in the fall, but | they are immediately starting to transition her team, which | is exactly what I'd expect. | amrrs wrote: | Mark Zuckerberg's interview with Lex Fridman changed my | perception about him. He seems really an empathetic person. | Maybe he's too deep into his own dogma but he's definitely not | robotic. | | https://youtu.be/5zOHSysMmH0 | schrep wrote: | I've worked directly for Mark and closely with Sheryl for | nearly 14 years and this is very accurate. | romanhn wrote: | I gotta say, seeing the Meta CTO / Senior Fellow pop up on HN | is an unexpected treat! (Oddly, a relative and an ex-boss of | mine both worked with you at CenterRun back in the day. | Silicon Valley is a small place indeed) | schrep wrote: | Wow small world indeed!!! The team at CenterRun was amazing | Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: | > If this is an accurate reflection of her experience, I don't | expect it's a side of Mark Zuckerberg most of us imagine | exists. | | That's because CEOs aren't public figures such as actors or | musicians. They should not be that and they should not be | politicians. The fact that people know Mark Zuckerberg name or | his face at all is in itself an anomaly. | | CEOs are the ones who get to sign off the quality of life that | their company provides. That's about it. | | I don't know the name of Shell CEO but I know they are the | person who get to sign off the quality of life which comes when | I take a trip to Mexico or fill the tank of my Navigator and | they also get the blame for externalities in lieu of me, which | is nice...otherwise the green tree hugger loons such as | extinction rebellion would attack my car. | [deleted] | kosyblysk666 wrote: | mistrial9 wrote: | Safra Catz, Sheryl Sandberg, Dianne Feinstein .. somehow, I did | not expect this kind of "success" in California in 2022 | frisco wrote: | I increasingly believe that Facebook's pivot to Meta will end up | going down as one of the biggest misses in the history of | business. The metaverse is a real idea yes - but strapping a | phone to your face and walking through your coffee table isn't | it. Especially not with a mediocre centralized FB owned "virtual | world" where they inflict heavy taxes and content moderation. | Facebook has neglected its core businesses for years and seems to | have real trouble shipping hardware with reasonable spending. | | Now they're scrambling to ship an iPhone alternative to get out | from under Apple policy, but it really seems like they're on | constant defense now and have a very tough lift to actually get | something truly mass market. I would be shocked if Apple, | Microsoft or Google were irrelevant in 2030, but it is really | possible (if not yet necessarily probable) that Facebook/Meta | might actually just not exist in the same kind of way anymore | then. | | When they first announced the rebrand I actually thought it could | be genius and that there's no way they could have been doing it | without a really well considered, heavily backstopped plan... but | epic strategic miscalculation seems to be going around a lot this | year. | tootie wrote: | I think the huge confusion they are partaking in the difference | between data and UI. A 3d virtual world can exist independently | from a headset. The headset is just a phone you strap to your | face. And the data behind that 3d virtual world is just a 2d | virtual world with a z-axis. We've been building 3d games for | decades and we've built 3d UIs for nearly as long and they | never catch on. They're hard to navigate and, more importantly, | convey absolutely no extra information. The entire move from | physical interaction like shopping at a store to virtual | interaction like e-commerce is that the 2d world is way more | efficient. We've already built a fully functional metaverse. | We've built fully digital models of commerce, healthcare, | education, communication, finance, travel. All of which has UIs | that work perfectly well on flat screens. Putting that inside a | headset is just not a groundbreaking change. | cma wrote: | They are already outselling Microsoft's gaming consoles (though | both use heavy subsidies) in dollar volume by a large margin. | joshstrange wrote: | I have zero faith in FB being able to deliver on the metaverse | and more importantly, on hardware. They bought their way into | VR and we still don't know if they will screw it up just as | badly as they have every other hardware product they've | attempted. | | Google is king of web, iffy on software, and decent on hardware | (when they commit). | | Apple is king of hardware/software and sucks on web (it's | really embarrassing at this point, I want to pull my hair out | when I use almost any of their web-based tools, consumer or | developer focused) | | FB is decent on social for now but they haven't innovated in | forever, they just buy up things like IG/WhatsApp/Oculus , I'm | not convinced they are capable of producing anything | interesting internally. | | Maybe my comment will age badly but I'm not at all worried | about FB "owning" the metaverse or anything like that, they | have a terrible track record. | elif wrote: | I see things completely opposite, other than my agreement that | the current meta implementation is categorically bad. | | The way I see it, Facebook is dead. It lost its place in | society by forcibly combining free online expression with | personal identity and responsibility. What remains is a | culturally normative repository of groupthink with fewer and | fewer participants deriving novel value, and that is reflected | in the userbase trends. | | What meta represents philosophically is a return to semi- | anonymized and immediate human-to-human interaction, without | the pretense of permanence or the necessity to project only | socially righteous behavior. It is a natural, and by nature | ephemeral medium. It is the only hope for meta long-term, and | beating apple out of the gate is an encouraging sign to me. | walleeee wrote: | > semi-anonymized and immediate human-to-human interaction | | why are optionally anonymous forums like HN not sufficient | for this? why do we need virtual avatars, content markets, | gamification? | | if people want these things there are always video games | nine_k wrote: | > _they inflict heavy taxes and content moderation._ | | It's fun to see people demanding more moderation and berating | excessive moderation in FB, regularly, on this very forum. | majewsky wrote: | Despite what is often implied, there are in fact multiple | people with different opinions posting on this site. | nine_k wrote: | Exactly. I try to underline the fact that catering to | audience with multiple opinions, often contradicting one | another, is not easy, and can only be a compromise. | Everybody will constantly complain, no matter how optimal | the moderation and general governance would be. | prostoalex wrote: | > The metaverse is a real idea yes - but strapping a phone to | your face and walking through your coffee table isn't it. | | We should not confuse the technology with the use case. Once | you are the standard-bearer on technology, any future use case | is something you can easily piggyback and dominate. | | E.g. early versions of iPhone did not support NFC payments, | while some competitor models did. Nevertheless, Apple Pay is | fairly dominant. | joshstrange wrote: | > Nevertheless, Apple Pay is fairly dominant. | | I ran stats on an event I wrote software for, Apple Pay was | 70%+ of all 1-click checkouts, Google Pay was under 30%. I | was a little shocked at the difference though after spending | more time trying to develop for Google Pay I can't help but | wonder if that factors in. That and them renaming it every | other week and removing features, it's a dumpster fire here | in the US from what I can see. I've only ever seen my friends | use Samsung Pay on their Androids. | nickysielicki wrote: | To play devils advocate, Facebook is more essential to my life | than it ever was before. | | * Marketplace was a huge success in terms of subsuming | Craigslist. The quality of posts and the volume of postings | makes me rarely even check Craigslist anymore. | | * Small forums for various hobbies are almost entirely driven | by Facebook groups now, instead of in the past where you'd find | some custom bulletin board where the last post on most | subforums was 3 years ago. It's better than Reddit for certain | things. Groups for communities (ie: your neighborhood or small | town) are thriving, too. | | * Messenger is the sole mechanism I have to keep in touch with | friends from school that are now back overseas. | | I think their general success is assured, even if the metaverse | isn't ready yet. They can afford to lose some money on a big | bet. | | On the other hand, I think that they missed the boat with the | metaverse not being a big thing during covid lockdowns, because | the cultural rebound of covid yields zero appetite for virtual | existence. People want to make up for lost time. | pishpash wrote: | This must be cohort-dependent. | | For me, Marketplace buyers have flaked out more than | Craiglist ones. Forums are less useful/dynamic than anonymous | Reddit. And I don't even touch Messenger vs. numerous other | chat apps. | georgeecollins wrote: | It's the thirty year anniversary of the Newton, a complete | failure as a product. When it failed people said that people | would never carry around computers, there was no need. They | were bulky, a huge hassle and didn't do anything better than | paper. All of this was true. Yet I don't think it is a | coincidence that the iPhone came from the same company. | | I don't like Facebook as a product. But I like that Meta is | trying to make something work that isn't possible today, but | may be possible in the future. It may not work out for them and | their vision may never happen. But when someone makes fun of | "strapping a phone to your face" I hear "get a horse". It | doesn't take brains or vision to see the limitations of present | technology. | joshstrange wrote: | Yes but FB has never created a successful hardware product, | that was not the case for Apple when it made (and failed) | with the Newton. | georgeecollins wrote: | That's true. So maybe they will fail. Should they give up? | nicodjimenez wrote: | The real pivot for FB was their pivot to Instagram, with | facebook.com pivoting to a "secret police" business model and | shutting down open discussions, which used to flourish there. | They've done this very well. FB today is more of a political | organization than a business organization especially in the US. | The Metaverse is just a distraction from this development that | will have no impact on their cash cow Instagram. | | The nice thing about Instagram and Twitter, as far as | Washington lobbyists are concerned, is that it's influencer | driven and there's very little room for bottom up discussion | between "normal" people. The original Facebook was a tool where | dissent could grow in a bottom up fashion, with friends posting | and realizing, "holy smokes! I was thinking that too!". This | doesn't happen any more now that everyone knows that big | brother is watching. | HappyTypist wrote: | Insightful observation. Arab Spring changed Facebook and | social media, across the whole world. | | Don't forget the AI moderation-on-post. Just recently, a | popular 'influencer' posted a scam. I left a comment saying | such, along with a comment that the influencer should be | ashamed of himself, and immediately, an AI filter told me | that my comment may go against the Community Standards, and | that repeated attempts to comment would lead to account | deactivation. There is no appeal button. | | To those building these technologies, beyond false positives | and coverage error, it takes one law or PR incident for you | to re-train this model against dissent. And to those building | technologies like Apple's CSAM scanning, it takes one DB | replacement to make it flag photos of the Hong Kong protests | or Tank Man. | ynx wrote: | My money is on this comment aging poorly. | | Not because there shouldn't be legitimate concerns about VR, | but because it's pointing to Facebook execution fail as the | only thing that matters to the success of the metaverse, and | it's expecting that the timeline should have been further along | by now. | | Facebook has always built mediocre products. Its strength is in | acquiring or copying good ones, and then jacking the internal | engineering on them up to 11. | | Apple is seen as putting out good products, but they put out | the Newton, ROKR, and even internally designed the iPad before | they released the iPhone. There is time to build a good | product, and chances are, Facebook won't be the one to build | it. | | And yet - first year iPhone sales and first year Quest 2 sales | are somewhat on par. There's reason for optimism, or at least | not heavy pessimism, yet. | this_user wrote: | The question is whether or not this is even a category that | will ever be more than a niche. What value does this kind of | VR environment really provide beyond its novelty, and is this | something that the average person actually wants? I am not so | sure about that, and history is full of technologies that | sound cool on paper, but have limited use in practice. | | Consider, for example, the repeated attempts at making 3D | televisions a thing. It keeps popping up every couple of | years, then people figure out that they don't really need it, | and it fades away again. This kind of VR technology could | very well be the same. Even 3D gaming remains a niche despite | some serious attempts by major players to turn it into | something more than a gimmick. | ethbr0 wrote: | I'd also point out that a huge number of disruptive | technologies that succeeded where other had failed did so | because of... content. | | It's effectively impossible to buy sufficient content to meet | AAA platform expectations these days. Because you're | competing against incredibly competent, experienced, and | well-stocked legacy alternatives. | | Consequently, either (a) "upgrading" an existing deep pool of | legacy content (Google search, iPhone/web) or (b) turning | every user into a content producer (Facebook, TikTok) have | very good chances of success. | | And finally, to call out a fundamental blind spot: if | Facebook doesn't lose, they win. | | Everyone pretends Facebook needs to _win_ the VR market. They | don 't. They just need to keep enough of an eye on it that | they aren't blindsided by a competitor, and then scale up | their engineering once a seed appears successful. Their size, | revenue, and ubiquity will win by default. | | If FB has 100 engineers working on VR for 20 years with | nothing to show for it, but that allows them to ramp up when | something magic finally happens (right hardware breakthrough, | etc), then that's FB money well spent. | phaedrus wrote: | Re: comment aging poorly - somewhere on this site there's a | really old comment of mine saying I couldn't believe Facebook | didn't accept the Microsoft buy-out offer. I correctly | predicted the then-soon coming backlash against Facebook and | that they would become "uncool", but I failed to predict that | that wouldn't impede Facebook much as a business nor lead to | the mass exodus of users. | chaostheory wrote: | I feel that you need to actually try out the Quest 2 before you | pan it. | HWR_14 wrote: | If they let me use it offline without an account I would be | tempted. I have no desire to have hardware that only works | when connected to the internet via an account. | PheonixPharts wrote: | The first week I had the Quest I thought it was the most game | changing device of my entire life. Especially during the | pandemic it was incredible to transport to another world. I | was long a nay-sayer on VR but then completely changed my | mind, I couldn't shut up to all my friends about how | incredible an experience it was... | | That wore off less than a month later. Even in a house it | takes up too much space to use. Using it too much still gives | me a headache. Plus being teleported to another world, while | amazing at first, does feel isolating after too much use. I | have put orders of magnitude more time into playing switch on | my couch than my Oculus (which collects dust in my basement) | and I got my switch a few months ago. | | The most damning thing though is how little interest there is | in VR by the broader gaming community. I never hear anyone on | major gaming sites or youtube channels mention VR other than | brief, occasional mentions when talking PC performance. | | Outside of the tech community nobody I know at all cares | about VR in the slightest. The Oculus is a huge step forward, | but after having been so excited about it, I'm even more | convinced that it will never really take off. | chaostheory wrote: | > The first week I had the Quest I thought it was the most | game changing device of my entire life. | | Did you own a Quest or Quest 2? Quest 2 is noticeably | better. | | > That wore off less than a month later. | | A major use case for me is cardio exercise. Imo the Quest 2 | is better than a Peleton for the variety of workouts. Many | games are low key fitness apps. This is what keeps me | coming back. I've lost 20 lbs so far with the Quest 2 | | > Using it too much still gives me a headache. | | This might be related to Quest 2's inflexible IPD | adjustment. It probably isn't an issue on higher end XR | headsets like the upcoming Apple headset as well as PSVR2 | | > Plus being teleported to another world, while amazing at | first, does feel isolating after too much use. | | The trick is to only play multiplayer apps or games. | | > The most damning thing though is how little interest | there is in VR by the broader gaming community. | | There are two major reasons for this: | | 1. Meta is still a toxic brand. Slightly less toxic than | FB, but it still prevents a lot of early adopters from even | trying it | | 2. Other alternatives are drastically more expensive AND | complicated. While Quest 2 starts at $299, other VR systems | start at $499 - $999, and they need a VR capable PC | starting at $1599. | joshstrange wrote: | > 1. Meta is still a toxic brand. Slightly less toxic | than FB, but it still prevents a lot of early adopters | from even trying it | | If Facebook wasn't behind it I would probably own a Quest | 2 (even though I'll buy Apple's VR headset at release) | but as-is I won't touch that with a 10' pole. | chaostheory wrote: | It's rumored that the Apple headset will cost $3000. | Hopefully, that's not true or XR adoption will continue | to be slow. Imo Apple will get XR into mainstream if they | can control the price. The industry will either be made | or setback by Apple | the_lonely_road wrote: | Triangle Strategy was a surprisingly fun and addictive game | you might be interested in. Close to Final Fantasy Tactics | in gameplay but with a branching narrative. | | I have also been really enjoying my switch recently while | my Oculus collects dust. | nickdothutton wrote: | Augmented reality will beat virtual reality. | zmmmmm wrote: | Not exactly .... what will really happen is the distinction | will go away. | | All the next gen VR headsets are building in color | passthrough so that they effectively operate as AR devices - | but better ones in some ways because they can actually | replace reality fully when they want to, not be constrained | to just tweaking it. | rvz wrote: | This. | | That is the true _reality_ of it all. | gfodor wrote: | You'll change your mind once you start seeing people walking | around in their rPods, or whatever. (Apple's new headset) | narrator wrote: | I think the Metaverse will fail because it's a creepy futurism | project. Creepy futurism says the solution to climate change is | to replace real experiences with virtual experiences that don't | burn any carbon. The piece de resistance of creepy futurism in | the metaverse is intended to be the virtual child | experience[1]. You satisfy the instinctual drives to destroy | the climate with more children[2], but instead you do it in a | sustainable simulated way. Kind of like instead of living | forever, which is utterly unsustainable, we upload our brains | to the metaverse and have your carbon body used for plant food | or whatever and our friends and family get the simulated | experience of still having us around! Like most creepy futurism | projects, nobody really wants this except the people who spend | their days trying to figure out how to save the planet by any | means necessary and have come up with all sorts of fake climate | friendly substitutes, like the vast array of vegan meat | substitutes that nobody eats, but seem to be fully in stock in | every grocery store and fast food chain. | | Like all creepy futurism projects, there seems to be an | unlimited amount of money and associated ESG and "The Current | Thing" street credibility behind these projects that see them | funded and cheerled in the press to absurd levels even as the | public is absolutely luke warm about it all at best. | | [1]https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/37980/20220601/virtual | ... | | [2]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want- | to-... | oldstrangers wrote: | Facebook was always doomed for failure, just like every social | platform that came before it. The pivot should've happened | years ago with a focus on Instagram and content creation (their | shot at streaming was at least in the right direction). | | At this point, Facebook has simply waited entirely too long, | and the likelihood of any pivot working for a company of their | size is basically nonexistent. | crispyambulance wrote: | > ... was always doomed for failure | | You could also say that "they won" and there's no where to go | but down now. | | Nothing can grow forever and things that try are known, in | the biological domain, as cancers or infestations. There's | quite a few corporations that "won" their market, so they're | primed for a decline-- if you can still even call it that | after enough people made more money than god and retired. | skinnymuch wrote: | Facebook having such a bad rep across the board of people | did not help at all. Like why is FB not doing any major | enterprise initiative or cloud computing? Especially now | with their stock dropping, having another $100B in value | would help a lot. | | They haven't monetized Messenger or WhatsApp much either. | Maybe they can't or it won't ever be enough. Less than | billions in profit won't help much. Which does make them | having won and are now going down seem more correct. | xtracto wrote: | I feel that social networks are best done in an | descentralized way: Like IRC, and Usenet on its own time. | There should be no "winner" or local entity that tries to | milk profits out of it. | | Because exactly as you said: Facebook "won" the social | network game several years ago: Everybody was in there. | From there the only thing it could do to try to milk more | profits was to bring it down. | | Instead, we've got IRC or Usenet that, years and years | after their "peak", they are still going well and good. | Gone are the "ethernal septembers" and most of spam. And | the protocol and networks (that matter for the people using | it) are still in there. | infinite_beam wrote: | The future of FB/Meta is WhatsApp. | danpalmer wrote: | I think Facebook (the company) have known that Facebook (the | social network) was never going to live forever. | | The first pivot was into Photos. A mini pivot, but an | important one as being a glorified contact list and blog was | on the way out. | | Then they saw another competitor rising, so they bought it to | ride its lifecycle. Instagram. | | Then into Messaging, with messenger and WhatsApp. Most people | I know use one or both of these and not Facebook. | | There have been other smaller pivots to stay relevant | overall, even if any one piece of the business is dying, and | I think that's good business practice. | | Whether the meta verse turns out to be the next wave or not | is essentially their current bet. | havblue wrote: | It's hard to post to a platform when you know whatever you | say that's controversial, or even whatever you say that | becomes controversial, will follow you the rest of your life. | baby wrote: | I'll add to the pile of speculation of "I know why facebook | is failing (when it isn't)". To me it's the fact that it | became less and less of a useful tool. It used to be this | simple thing where you could connect with your friends or | people you would meet (perhaps with the intent of dating | them). There was a news feed that was sorted by chronological | order, and you would mostly see updates and photos posted by | people. Creating an event was easy. | | Today, nothing is chronological, profiles are (somewhat) | public facing, people just posts links, photos has basically | moved to instagram, messaging has moved to whatsapp, and | events hasn't changed a bit. Plus there's a ton of other new | features that dilute the tool. | threeseed wrote: | a) Facebook is not doomed for failure. Their audience just | got older and rather than abandon them they acquired | companies more suited to younger generations e.g. Instagram, | Oculus instead. And it's a strategy that has unquestionably | worked. | | b) Facebook isn't really pivoting to metaverse any more than | Apple is pivoting to services. It's an additional revenue | stream alongside their existing ones which are still very | healthy and lucrative. | jjfoooo5 wrote: | > Their audience just got older and rather than abandon | them they acquired companies more suited to younger | generations e.g. Instagram, Oculus instead. | | This strategy has run it's course. Regulators are keen to | weaken FB and will obstruct further acquisitions. | Acquisition targets know they can beat FB in the long run | and will no longer agree to be purchased. | anthropodie wrote: | Facebook is going down? I don't think they are. They own | Instagram which is generating lots of money and then they own | WhatsApp which is not even monetized yet. FB might not exist | in a decade but Meta isn't going anywhere. | dbbk wrote: | Facebook itself (the blue app) has 2.9 billion monthly | active users. There are 7.7 billion people on the planet. | No... they are not 'going down'. | bingohbangoh wrote: | Facebook dominated in part because people would endlessly | scroll during class, at the bus stop, waiting on line, etc. | | VR and the Metaverse require a much bigger commitment by | comparison. You can't casually use them. Heck, you can't really | even eat or drink while a VR headset is strapped to your face. | colinmhayes wrote: | VR is just a stepping stone. AR glasses can't be far behind, | and they're even more convenient than phones. Really the end | game here has to be star trek style holodeck or matrix style | dream state, at which point the company effectively controls | your entire life. | throwaway3907 wrote: | Meta reported revenue of $27.9 billion in Q1 2022. They will | continue making billions from ads for decades even if the | metaverse play goes nowhere. But if you believe that VR/AR is | going to eventually go mainstream then Meta is positioned to be | a player in that market, even if it's just a 2nd or 3rd place | player that's potentially billions in additional revenue. | tempsy wrote: | Well the epic stock slide over past few months would tell you | investors are highly cautious about the company's future. | [deleted] | tyrfing wrote: | They make $200/year per user in North America, all 250 | million of them. Cut that to 1/3 and their value as a | company is far lower, but they still make more per user | than a subscription service like Netflix. Now, you can say | "nobody thought that ARPU was sustainable", but they have a | long history of making unbelievable numbers bigger. | | Their real mistake was not pushing to own the entire | vertical stack, building unassailable moats like Google and | Apple. Oculus is that bet, and other companies like Valve | are pursuing similar strategies. | tejohnso wrote: | On a 3 month chart FB is down 10% from start to now. | | That's hardly "epic". | | And the NASDAQ composite is down 13% in the same time | frame. | dylan604 wrote: | 10% is about what everyone in today's economy seems to be | doing. it's the bigger slide from Apple blocking their | tracking that should be more worrisome than a natural | economic hiccup | tempsy wrote: | -44% ytd lol | | why write something in bad faith? | edmundsauto wrote: | Tech as a whole is down 27% over that period, which means | $FB underperformed but not by a whole lot. | tempsy wrote: | QQQ is down 23% ytd so they underperformed the Nasdaq 100 | by 2000 bps. that is objectively "a lot" especially for a | mega cap. | loeg wrote: | That's a pretty selective lookback. The big slide was 4 | months ago. If you look at trailing 6 months, FB is down | 40%, vs down 10% for S&P500 or 23% for NASDAQ. | garettmd wrote: | Everything is going down right now. -10% over the last 3 | months doesn't seem that epic to me. | PheonixPharts wrote: | It seems wildly disingenuous to talk about 3 months when | the initial Facebook crash was after their earnings call | 4 months ago. | tempsy wrote: | -44% ytd is epic | lbhdc wrote: | I don't think most people think it will crater and be gone | tomorrow. I suspect people tend to think that if it is on a | decline it will be a long slow death. | jjtheblunt wrote: | > They will continue making billions from ads for decades | even if the metaverse play goes nowhere. | | and no competitors outperform them, or advertising paradigm | shift occurs? | Barrin92 wrote: | hard to imagine tbh, they own three of the world's five | largest communication platforms. | skinnymuch wrote: | If Messenger is seen as its own platform which I think it | can be, that makes 4 of the top 5 | loceng wrote: | Ads are the past. | justapassenger wrote: | Ads have been around for as long as we had economic | activity as humans. | | They're past as much as selling is past. | | Now, is their ads business strong enough to survive in more | privacy aware world? That's a different story. | colinmhayes wrote: | The entire internet subsists on ads. Even Amazon retail, a | store that sells physical goods makes its profit selling | ads. If anything they're only going to become more | important as to internet becomes more accessible to low | resource individuals around the world. | PheonixPharts wrote: | > The entire internet subsists on ads. | | I don't understand how people can make this statement and | not immediately realize their is something deeply, deeply | wrong about this situation. | | Ads _derive_ their value from the product being sold, the | fact that ads themselves have become the economic | underpinning of the entire internet, rather than actual | things being sold, should tell you there is a problem. | fleddr wrote: | Everybody realizes it's wrong. The issue is not a lack of | understanding. The issue is the lack of an alternative. | | People will not pay a penny for the vast majority of the | internet, whether they be social networks or just plain | websites. They won't donate either or do "micro | transactions", not at the scale in which ads currently | deliver revenue. | | So for the vast majority of the internet, no ads = no | money. And it ends right there, hobbyist bloggers aside. | fumar wrote: | I was recently taken aback by how much some of the online | major destinations make per site load with ads. It is | over $.04 USD. People visit hundreds of pages per day. | What consumer will pay over $10 daily to access content | that is free with ads? | HWR_14 wrote: | > What consumer will pay over $10 daily to access content | that is free with ads? | | I have a similar question to "what customer will still | load ads". And the answer is probably anyone still using | Google Chrome after they upgrade the manifest version to | v4 and finally kill adblocking. | deltaonefour wrote: | >Facebook has neglected its core businesses for years and seems | to have real trouble shipping hardware with reasonable | spending. | | I don't think there's deliberate neglect here. Fashion shifts | and facebook is no longer as fashionable. It is very very hard | to stay at the forefront of fashion unless you're product is | one that reinvents itself on an annual basis (see the fashion | industry) | | The meta pivot seems to be more of a desperate anticipation | then a strategic opportunity. Facebook conveniently announced | meta just before the earnings call. | cvhashim wrote: | Yahoo is still around but not as prominent. Could be the same | with Meta. | wollsmoth wrote: | Just kind of seems like they're working on a very expensive, | boring video game. | | the AR thing sounds cool, but are people really going to pick | the Meta one over the Apple or Google one? | Seriomino wrote: | Meta became what tv channels like history channel became: | | Cheap entertainment for the masses. | | Does it make money? Obviously. | | And funny enough they have so much money and what do they do | actually with it? | | Nothing someone can actually name besides: the feed, messenger, | occulus and stuff they bought up like insta and Whatsapp. | | Congratulations to Facebook and basically no real innovation in | the last 10 years. | | Besides optimizing the addictiones of garbage which got easily | trumped by TikTok. | jl6 wrote: | > The metaverse is a real idea yes - but strapping a phone to | your face and walking through your coffee table isn't it. | | Face, meet book. Boom. | paganel wrote: | Not to mention that the metaverse "universe" looks, for lack of | a better word, kind of shitty. I mean all those billions of | dollars (or maybe more) invested to get something that looks | like this [1]? Or like this [2]? | | Not since Google+ have I seen so much hybris when it comes to | one of the big SV companies, but at least back then Google | didn't bet the entire company on Google+ succeeding or not the | same way as Facebook (ok, Meta) seems to be doing right now | with the metaverse (yes, I know about the "all small arrows | behind one big arrow" or something like that speech that came | from Page but it turned out not even the Google higher-ups | believed in their prep-talks). | | [1] | https://media.wired.com/photos/61bd32b4b540f6bc340c4449/mast... | | [2] | https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2022/02/15/screenshot-11-1_... | tempsy wrote: | Agreed that FB hasn't actually proven they can build something | from scratch that reaches critical mass. They would've have | been long doomed had they not bought Instagram. Every other | popular app eg Oculus and Whatsapp was also acquired. | infamouscow wrote: | Zuckerberg created a culture of copying rather than | innovating, driving out all of the talented employees. The | long-term consequences of that leave you with a banal | organization incapable of shifting with the market. | zmmmmm wrote: | Interesting then that the community has massively adopted | React and PyTorch as defacto defaults for web dev and deep | learning. How is it that these untalented lifer's left | behind are doing these wildly crazy good technical things? | chrischen wrote: | A big company acquiring small things and developing them | successfully is a pretty common tactic. Many of Google's | product, if not most, were also from acquisitions. This | includes Maps and YouTube, and some of the less successful | ones were not acquired. | tempsy wrote: | Yeah but that isn't what I'm referring to. It's clear FB is | investing billions to build their vision of the Metaverse | in house, at least for now, and my point is that they | haven't actually proven to anyone that they are capable of | building a brand new thing from scratch that reaches | critical mass without acquiring it elsewhere. In that sense | I agree with investors who have sold the stock that this is | a big risk. | senko wrote: | They also copied the timeline feature from Twitter. | | Before that, people had a wall and you could go there and | read what they wrote and poke them ... remember poking? | | They do seem rather good at buying good product companies or | copying ideas, which could serve them well in the metaverse- | space (ugh...), once it's established. | blue_box wrote: | No, they bought FriendFeed for that. | hervature wrote: | I feel compelled to say that your second sentence is probably | the funniest thing I've ever read on HN. It resonates very | strongly with my belief that VR/Metaverse will continue to | under deliver. What people want is an escape from reality. | "Just like" Ready Player One or anything from a wide choice of | science fiction novels. The problem is that these systems | require a fundamental disconnect from reality. Not only do we | not have the input technology, the closest thing we have is a | monkey playing pong, but the obstruction of physical world | signals is basically non-existent. If it were, then we wouldn't | have people in chronic pain. Finally, we already know how this | experiment ends. This is basically SecondLife 2.0 (ThirdLife?). | We'll have 0.1% stay because they invested so much (money, | time, identity) into the world that the sunk cost fallacy kicks | in. | cma wrote: | > but the obstruction of physical world signals is basically | non-existent. If it were, then we wouldn't have people in | chronic pain. | | The key one, the vestibular system, is overridable non- | invasively: | | Galvanic vestibular stimulation https://www.wikipedia.org/wik | i/Galvanic_vestibular_stimulati... | | Vision and sound covered too, though vision can get better | with more res and variable focus. Sound can get better with | 3d scanning for custom HRTF's matched to the user's ear shape | and body (sound reflecting off shoulders etc.). | hervature wrote: | I mean, yea, earplugs and a blindfold work too, but how do | I feel like I'm walking through a pasture with wet dirt | between my toes if you cannot simulate the sensory system? | That's what people imagine. A home-bound person wants to | feel what it is like to skydive, not watch a POV video. | Karawebnetwork wrote: | What if the future generations never gets to experience | those feelings? They would not know what they are | missing. | hutzlibu wrote: | I have met kids, who have never seen a forest in real | live and who tried to swipe away real life objects, so | yeah, we might get there. | sigspec wrote: | Now that's a bleak thought | modeless wrote: | Proprioception cannot be fooled. No matter what you do to | your vestibular system it's not going to realistically feel | like you're in a fighter jet or a race car. It can't even | make walking on an omnidirectional treadmill feel like real | walking. Galvanic vestibular stimulation is not really a | good idea, independent of the fact that it literally sends | high voltage electricity through your skull. | cma wrote: | Walking on a VR treadmill is actually the opposite | example of what you are claiming I believe. It exercises | your proprioception without giving you the right | vestibular response (except on huge military 12x12ft | treadmills and stuff that can accommodate decent amounts | of real acceleration from locomotion, I'm assuming you | mean consumer "slipmill" type setups where you fully run | in place). | modeless wrote: | Not really. Your proprioception is accurately sensing the | same as your vestibular system, which is that you are | moving your limbs but you don't have forward momentum | because you're not moving. Which is totally fine and | indistinguishable from normal in the steady state of | walking in one direction at a constant speed as on a | regular treadmill, but the illusion falls apart the | second you try to turn or change speed, as you'll want to | do on a VR treadmill. | | If you apply galvanic vestibular stimulation to try to | "correct" at least the vestibular sense, you will lose | your balance and fall over, because you can't fool | physics. Even if you're prevented from falling by a | harness it won't feel right. The disagreement between | your vestibular and proprioception senses will be | uncomfortable. | haunter wrote: | >What people want is an escape from reality. | | I still don't understand what's the difference between MMOs | and Metaverse. Like it's on mobile? That's all? Peak WoW | _was_ a social network something Zuck is dreaming about (and | that's while you also have to pay a monthly sub). I've read | around and some people say that the difference people can | _create content_ in Metaverse but... sandbox MMOs are also a | thing for a long time (or just look at | Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite). Or the whole point just to attach | your persona to your real name + Meta can monetize | everything? But that still just sounds like some F2P korean | MMO or a japanese gacha game. | | Maybe there is more to that but to me at least 1, the | Metaverse sounds more like a "vision" than an actual product | (yet VR Chat already exist too if the main selling point is | AR/VR) 2, if it's an actual product then it's an MMO | reimagined for non-gaming "normal" people | unity1001 wrote: | > I still don't understand what's the difference between | MMOs and Metaverse | | Lack of mundane grinding for exp, rep and mats? | haunter wrote: | >Lack of mundane grinding | | Auto/afk [anything] is a staple in lot of mobile MMOs. | Like auto-battle, auto-questing etc. Yeah I don't know | why would you even "play" at that point but then again | those games are insanely popular. Kinda like "gamifying a | game" if that make sense. | elorant wrote: | The difference is that you play with your whole body, not | just your fingers. You can duck for cover, or run, or kick | and punch someone, or construct an item with your hands. | It's immersive and it could take gaming to a whole other | level. | | This is what AR and games are all about. Not necessarily | what Meta wants to build. | nradov wrote: | So basically like "Ready Player One" where you need a | full motion capture suit, 2-D treadmill, and handheld | controls. There's probably a niche market of hardcore | gamers like the people who build full cockpits for flight | simulators. But this complicated stuff is never going to | penetrate the mainstream mass market. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Maybe a giant inflatable ball in your backyard pool that | you climb in. | thewebcount wrote: | How's that going to work in my living room where there's | an ottoman, a coffee table, the dog's running around, | etc. Or do I need to build a new room just for AR/VR | stuff? I mean, yeah you can do some interesting stuff | like having virtual Jenga on your coffee table, or | whatever, but thinking in terms of HalfLife 4, or even | sitting around chatting with 3 other friends who are in | different locations, it sounds like it would start to | become impossible just because of the space I'd be in. | (Or expensive if I have to have a new space that I keep | clear all the time.) | colinmhayes wrote: | > Or do I need to build a new room just for AR/VR stuff? | | Probably, at least until we perfect the matrix or 360 | degree treadmill tech. | elorant wrote: | You get a kind of treadmill which is stationary and you | move inside it. Come on guys, stuff like that have been | described in sf literature decades ago. It's not like we | run out of ideas. We already have kinetic games for more | than a decade now. | | As for your friends, they can sit wherever the fuck they | please. They're holograms, or on a more crude version | just simulations from an AR/VR set. | Benjammer wrote: | I've never been convinced that physical immersion will | ever be as compelling to the human brain as mental | immersion through good story-telling. Having my real-life | body and physical attributes thrust directly into a | story/game just seems like the most non-immersive thing | possible to me unless the game is entirely designed | around moving the body, like DDR or Beat Saber or | whatever. | eludwig wrote: | This is what the makers of text adventures said about | graphic adventures, just in a different dimensional | context. And we all know how that turned out... :-/ | failTide wrote: | True, although I still feel more immersed in a good text | adventure than some of the best AAA games out there. I | played 'Lost Pig' [1] about a year ago and the 'visuals' | are still fresh in my mind. | | https://pr-if.org/play/lostpig/ | lovich wrote: | I don't understand this comment. Isn't having your real | life body put into the story/game like a textbook | definition of being more immersive than just engaging | with sight and sound? | JKCalhoun wrote: | "The last rays of sunlight disappear leaving a cold | darkness in the Uncanny Valley before you." | skybrian wrote: | The Nintendo Wii was briefly quite popular because it had | a crude version of this, and the Switch improved on it a | bit. | | Even using your fingers, going from keyboard and mouse | (on desktop) to touch (on mobile) was a major change. | | It's unclear to me that you need realistic 3D imagery | versus new kinds of input devices. Maybe smart knobs will | become popular? | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | This is my response every time someone mentions metaverse | as a new idea. Metaverses are awesome. I play one every | time I play a video game, especially WoW back in the day. I | don't need some crap strapped to my face. A tv or monitor | and the human sensory system works just fine. When I played | Elden Ring recently for 300+ hours I was in that world, | just as deeply as someone with annoying crap strapped to | their head. | | It's just easier to get gullible investors to invest in | your metaverse VR idea due to Gartner hype cycle rules, | which are currently at Peak of Inflated Expectations. | | > "the metaverse" can include virtual reality-- | characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to | exist even when you're not playing--as well as augmented | reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical | worlds. | JKCalhoun wrote: | > I still don't understand what's the difference between | MMOs and Metaverse. | | I think it's ads. | madrox wrote: | Silicon Valley is great at rebranding things that already | exist. Everyone talking a big game about the metaverse | never played an MMO. | seattle_spring wrote: | This is how I've felt since the beginning. Especially | lately with all of this NFT -> "virtual land" selling in | some cases for millions of dollars. Like... What? Why | wouldn't you play a game where virtual land is, get this, | _free_ , and provides the exact same value. | bcrosby95 wrote: | From what I can tell, metaverse is just an attempt to make | MMOs for "normal" people. So instead of a few million | people spending 6+ hours per day in your "game", you have a | few billion people spending 6+ hours per day in your | "game". | gowld wrote: | So, Second Life? | colinmhayes wrote: | but for normal people | luckydata wrote: | nobody knows because it's not a real thing. It's one of | those "there's something there and we need to be a part of | it when it gets big" kind of things. | | I don't believe that VR will ever become mainstream btw, | but AR has huge applicability starting from business but | also for people involved in all kinds of sports, especially | anything to do with bikes / skis / motorcycles etc... | | I strongly suspect Facebook will not be the winner of | either use case. | | Apple / Disney are much better positioned to capture the | "virtual amusement park / mall" space than Meta. | | Google / Microsoft are better positioned for the work / | leisure time use case. | | Conclusion: Meta is screwed. | oliwary wrote: | As far as I can tell from the material Meta has released, | they have an incredibly ambitious vision for the metaverse. | Essentially, I believe they want to create glasses that you | wear, that allow you to see other people in your space, | wherever they are. So you could have a conversation with | three friends in your living room, as if they were there, | while they could be on different continents, making | physical location irrelevant. | | Now, I am not sure if they will get there, but they are | investing heavily in the tech required (AR screen tech, | SLAM, 3d body reconstruction etc), and even partial success | could be enormous. Having spent a lot of time in VRChat, | seeing people and interacting with them up close has | something very powerful, even if if is just the beginning | of the technology. I am very excited to see where it goes | in any case. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Waiting for the Meta "power glove" too. | | What, wrong decade? | narrator wrote: | For those of you who missed the 80s and the movie The | Wizard (1989) which immortalized the Nintendo Power | Glove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw | outside1234 wrote: | So FaceTime? | | They aren't in the same room, just same screen, but I'm | not sure that really has value for me anyway? | hnthrowaway0328 wrote: | One thing I don't get is why there is a such high regard | of visual input. I mean, we can speak to our friends | since the telephone age, and we can see them on screen | too since maybe the 90s. Is there a huge demand to | actually see them _IN THE SAME ROOM_? | | I really don't think so. But maybe future generations | have different ideas. I think VR can make a lot of | difference in training (e.g. medical training) but it's | not consumer stuff. | cheriot wrote: | Video chats with more than 3 people start to suffer from | an inability to have multiple conversations at the same | time. Physical distance of a couple feet and visual | queues like the direction of a speakers face allow that | in 3d space. Maybe someone can overcome this in 2d? I | haven't seen it yet. | | I was on a casual call with ~10 people recently and the | way only one person could speak at a time was so | unfortunate. Really killed the experience compared to | chatting in person. | _jal wrote: | Maybe it is a cultural thing. | | Zoom mediates almost all meetings at my company. We went | full-remote in 2020, and are now heavily international. | | Screen sharing is heavily used, but nobody uses cameras | except for presentations. | | Even aside from our work norms, I have a strong | preference for voice-only realtime comms. Video just | doesn't add value to me. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | A lot of people find asynchronous and text-based | communication to be unpleasant. This maybe isn't the most | common sentiment on a tech news discussion forum, but | probably describes much of the population. I think the | internet's potential to help people socialize is really | hobbled by the text form factor of social media, chat, | and discussion forums. Video and voice calls are richer, | but they aren't good a good way to meet people. | | I've found that VRChat makes for a more pleasant, | natural, deeper experience than phone calls or video | chat. For me, it really replicates the experience of | hanging out with people in real life. | | Part of it is that it has the thing where you stand next | to the people you are talking to and you can move around | and talk to someone else when the conversation ebbs and | flows. You can go to smaller spaces where you know | everyone, or bigger places with friends of friends. | | This mitigates the problem with video or phone calls | where you have to sort of mutually agree with the other | party that you want to talk and when you are done | talking. Instead, you can more naturally flow between | different conversations. You can go to a crowd and meet | new people, you can go on adventure with your close | friend, or go hang out at your regular haunt. | | There are a lot of problems with the service, though. One | of the big ones is that the onboarding experience is | shitty for new players. If you don't already have friends | who play, you'll just end up with 14 year olds screaming | obscenities at you in a public world. | zenmaster10665 wrote: | Isn't this the same argument as 'we have telephones. Why | do we ever need to see the people on screens, isn't voice | enough?' | | Feeling truly present with someone isn't possible in 2d | morelisp wrote: | Lots of communication was more effective with voice calls | than video calls. | oliwary wrote: | I don't know! I do know that I vastly prefer meeting | people in person, compared to talking on the phone, and I | think it is the same for a lot of people. I prefer it so | much that I occasionally spend hundreds of dollars on | airplane tickets to travel to see friends and family and | attend meetings in person. | | There is clearly something different in in-person | interactions that makes me do this, and if Meta or | someone else can replicate part of that experience I | believe that could be very valuable. Think even of the | environmental implications - so much energy is spend | moving people around, imagine if AR platforms could | reduce the number of trips by even a small percentage! | fragmede wrote: | Personally I find video (Facetime/Duo/etc) to be more | immersive than audio-only when talking with someone. If | there's a similar leap in perceived connection with some | AR/VR gear then I'm all for it. | jjfoooo5 wrote: | > Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite | | These MMO's are the real absolute ceiling of whatever Meta | is trying to do, but that's insufficiently gigantic to | justify a pivot of Meta. | | So they are pitching it as something that will extend past | niche audiences (in absolute numbers they are huge but | niche in terms of FB scale). | | The incoherency of why non-gamers would be interested in | this is revealed in their advertising. For example, a | fitness buff talking about how swinging around a foam stick | with a headset strapped to her face is the best workout of | her life. | chaostheory wrote: | > I still don't understand what's the difference between | MMOs and Metaverse. | | You actually have to try VR to better understand. Google | Cardboard doesn't count | | Rec Room and VR chat are good places to start | Macha wrote: | Rec Room and VRChat are like earlier social MMOs, but | with the inherent appeal leaving them attractive enough | to cut out the pretense of gameplay (e.g. OSRS, MUDs, | were not that dissimilar in being mostly about chatting | with a distraction present) | | It also raises the question of what Facebook's metaverse | could do that VRChat and Rec Room haven't. VRChat is the | more successful of the two and has achieved the level of | success of "video game more popular than you might | realise", which for the small dev team is enough for a | profitable business. | | How do you make it profitable at meta scale? NFTs, loot | boxes and cosmetic microtransactions seem to be the | prospects raised by people promoting such ideas. But then | how is VRChat + microtransactions - your local modder's | blatant copyright infringement more appealing than | VRChat? | shakes_mcjunkie wrote: | WoW but more boring and with more microtransactions. | radicaldreamer wrote: | Final Fantasy XIV is at least fun | bozhark wrote: | Maybe if it had auto-path | haunter wrote: | Imagine the mandatory MSQ in the Metaverse | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | Cut substantially all of the Seventh Astral Era line and | maybe we can talk. | Macha wrote: | If you're not aware, they did this in one of the final | Shadowbringers patches. Most of the fluff that used to be | part of the MSQ is now moved to optional sidequests. | dragonwriter wrote: | Second Life but with hardware requirements with less | general-purpose utility. | JKCalhoun wrote: | AOL but with avatar solicitors coming to your virtual | door to try and interest you in "security deals from Ali | Express". | eastbayjake wrote: | > I still don't understand what's the difference between | MMOs and Metaverse | | Metaverse demos have felt _super_ underwhelming compared to | e.g. playing Grand Theft Auto 5 for a few hours | echelon wrote: | You need to check out "Metaverse Twitter". You're missing out | on a lot of fascinating developments. | | The field is in its "90's internet phase" right now. The tech | is still immature, but is rapidly growing in capability and | ambition. | | Just like most people in the 90's had no idea how "internet" | would be used, I think our ability to conceive of | VR/AR/XR/metaverse is similarly myopic. | | I would give it a 10-15 year timeline before it fully eats | the world. But now is the time to build. | ls15 wrote: | > The field is in its "90's internet phase" right now. | | Second Life was launched in 2003 | kibwen wrote: | The fact that "Metaverse Twitter" is a thing, implying that | even the people most religiously devoted to the metaverse | are still using Twitter rather than a 3D metaverse space | tells me all I need to know. It smacks of the old | skeumorphism craze: why bother "migrating" to a virtual | rendition of an obsolete part of meatspace when you could | just use the novel solution for interaction that already | works great in meatspace, and would be unchanged in the | metaverse? | firebaze wrote: | Sorry, don't buy into this. The main difference to me is | "the people" in the 90s were nerds. Now in the best | business scenario for facebook its the opposite: the more | nerdiness, the worse business outcome. They have to cater | for folks looking for anything but. | crispyambulance wrote: | I had thought that "Meta" was supposed to be a cool- | sounding conceptual name, but it seems that folks are | taking it literally to mean a very specific reference to a | "metaverse" in an actual 3D virtual reality environment. | | If that's the real intent, it seems kind of sad. | bawolff wrote: | If this is the 90's internet phase, what was VRML? | jeffwask wrote: | I 100% believe in VR/XR/AR just not one driven by Meta. | | Edit: To be clear, IMO most disruptive technologies are not | driven by established mega-corporations. | ethbr0 wrote: | Gmail? | | iPhone? | | Facebook Mobile? | | (And earlier, Bell/IBM/Oracle) | chirau wrote: | what is Facebook Mobile and how was it disruptive? | jeffwask wrote: | Trying to make my point or just confused. Not really sure | how to read that. | bawolff wrote: | Not really sure those were that disruptive. They are more | prefecting an existing thing, which is not really what | people mean by disruptive. | jcranmer wrote: | The most disruptive thing about gmail was that it was | obscenely expansive webmail space compared to your | typical webmail provider. But webmail was already pretty | damn common when gmail came out, and email had been the | killer app of the internet for a decade already. | | Facebook Mobile is... I'd have to think hard about what | it actually _is_ , so I'm not sure that qualifies as | disruptive. | | Now the iPhone _was_ disruptive. But although you 'd | fairly classify Apple _today_ as an "established mega- | corporation", it's a lot harder to do so when the iPhone | came out. To the extent that Apple can use its market | share to wield a powerful bludgeon against those who dare | cross it--which is what I associate the phrase with--that | market share doesn't exist until the phenomenal success | of the iPhone. It certainly couldn't do that on the basis | of its OS or computers (indeed, you can argue that it | _still_ can 't do that today). The iPod, or more | accurately iTunes, may have given it that power against | the music industry, but that's the closest to any sort of | tyrannical power it might have held at the time. | HWR_14 wrote: | Gmail was an already popular concept whose differentiator | was a company was willing to set money on fire to have | two or three orders of magnitude more storage than their | competitor. AFAIK, that's been their _only_ | differentiator - free storage space. | | iPhone was a breakout product from a decidedly no-longer | mega corp who practically died in the 1990s. I guess they | had already made a resurgence with the iPod, but I think | iPod leading to iPhone is similar enough that it's the | same jump. | | A mobile app from a company is a breakthrough product in | your eyes? | [deleted] | denlekke wrote: | what are some of the developments you find most fascinating | ? | | i own two vr headsets but don't really use them for more | than casual gaming with friends. haven't really seen the | killer use case yet | | google glass style AR still has the most "futurey" appeal | to me | zmmmmm wrote: | I remember walking into a computer shop in the late 90's | and saying I wanted to install Wifi in my house. They | looked at me like I was an alien. One of them literally | said "Why would you _want_ that? " | | It was probably less than 5 years before Wifi was | ubiquitous. | cinntaile wrote: | Any Twitter account suggestions? | blowski wrote: | In the 90s, the internet was very much being used. It was | so exciting that my friends and I sat waiting for 20-30 | seconds to see content. We exchanged messages, played each | other on Comamand and Conquer, looked at edgy content on | forums. | | Now, my Oculus headset sits gathering dust in a cupboard. | Nobody I know wants it because it's so boring using it for | more than half an hour. | jmvoodoo wrote: | I agree with you, but my 9 year old uses our Oculus more | than her tablet. She plays games with her friends from | school mostly, but also watches movies on Netflix, etc. | | I don't get it, but maybe I don't have to. | [deleted] | h2odragon wrote: | VR hype _predates_ the wider adoption of the internet. It | 's been in this "90s VR phase" _since the 90s_. | fullshark wrote: | We've been wanting to do this for 27 years | | https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=75 | zmmmmm wrote: | sure but the ground has shifted dramatically, in large | part due to Meta because of standalone devices. You can't | overlook that and pretend the tech is still 90's era. | oldgradstudent wrote: | The difference is that the internet was in its "90's | internet phase" for a single decade. | | VR is in that phase for multiple decades already. | dragonwriter wrote: | > The field is in its "90's internet phase" right now. The | tech is still immature, but is rapidly growing in | capability and ambition. | | This has been said to be the case (though for the first | several waves with a different analogy, for obvious | reasons) for every wave of the VR hype cycle since at least | the mid-80s. | | But it keeps not sticking, and I don't see any convincing | reason to believe that the people pushing, or buying into, | the hype understand why it keeps not sticking, much less | have done anything in the most recent wave to overcome | those problems. | lapetitejort wrote: | VR Chat is Second Life 2.0. Horizon Worlds is shaping up to | be VR Chat 0.8. People Make Games interviewed people in VR | Chat [0] and gave great examples of how behind (intentionally | in some cases, in terms of not having lower halves of | avatars) Horizon Worlds appears to be. | | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ | Miraste wrote: | I've used both and Horizon Worlds' lack of development is | mind-boggling. It's positioned as the crown jewel of the | Metaverse, the core from which Facebook will build the rest | of the concept, and yet it's so barebones it's like no one | is even working on it. | | VRChat has completely user-made avatars. To support this, | they have a robust content moderation system with a fair | amount of user control, and bounded performance | requirements. Horizon has very limited Mii-like avatars, | but with even less customization. This means they don't | have to moderate avatars or worry about performance, and | also crushes the boundless possibilities of self-expression | into a sea of identical corporate art style drones. | | VRChat also has user-made worlds. So does Horizons. The | difference is that Horizons worlds can only be made out of | primitives (cube, sphere, triangle, etc.) This makes it | easy to enforce performance requirements and also makes the | entire metaverse look like a poorly developed PS2 game. It | also runs _worse_ than a well-optimized environment mesh, | but apparently Facebook doesn 't trust their users to | figure that out. Second Life actually shipped with this | system originally (in 2003) and later abandoned the system | because of these and other problems, but learning from the | past is apparently not in vogue at Facebook. | | VRChat has a fairly granular safety system, with | configurable boundaries, default permissions, friend | settings, etc. Horizons has a half-hearted attempt at this | but leans mostly on the ominous promise that Facebook is | recording everything you say and do, and if someone reports | you an unreachable Facebook admin will review your past | actions for content violations. This works about as well as | you'd expect. | | These and other problems are, IMO, all bad decisions, but | they're also _low effort_ decisions and that I do not | understand. I actually like VR and want Facebook to succeed | here (hopefully incentivizing competition), and the | department formerly known as Oculus is doing a great job | with the requisite hardware. So why, _why_ , given that the | entire company has been bet on this, is the flagship | Metaverse software of the world's largest social media | company lagging behind a random startup making their | metaverse in Unity with practically no money? | Firmwarrior wrote: | > world's largest social media company lagging behind a | random startup | | This seems to be a really common recurring theme in the | tech industry and particularly the games industry, and I | wish I understood why | | Just look at Minecraft, Valheim, any of the recent | Pokemon games... A single person or a skeleton crew can | somehow always seem to outproduce gigantic companies full | of engineers and artists on the same level as the ones | from the skeleton crew. | dbbk wrote: | > What people want is an escape from reality. | | I don't think this is even broadly true. We just locked | everyone in their houses for the pandemic and people hated | it. They want to get out and do stuff and see the world. Not | sit on a couch with a screen strapped to their face. | mhewett wrote: | Not everyone. Everyone I know loved it. | swayvil wrote: | They probably loved it because they didn't have to work. | | Which is basically just another kind of sitting with a | screen strapped to your face. Except less fun. | | Work, for most people, is maybe a little too hellish. | thewebcount wrote: | Likewise! In fact, it was the first time my disabled | spouse was able to get some family to talk to her since | now they were in the same situation. It also opened up a | bunch of services for disabled people since now everyone | needed delivery and not answering the door for packages | was no longer weird. | colinmhayes wrote: | > We just locked everyone in their houses for the pandemic | and people hated it. | | Feel like this is not consensus on a tech forum. | thelittleone wrote: | Fair points though I suggest technology is farther along than | monkey playing pong. Consider Neuralink for one. I read the | book metaman back in the late 90s and even then they had very | simple brain to chip interfaces. | closedloop129 wrote: | VR only underdelivers when compared to full emergence. You | don't need a television when you have a VR headset. I think | that Meta's headsets will be the the consoles for the next | generation because TV sets are not a given anymore. So a | console becomes more expensive because you have to also buy a | television. | clpm4j wrote: | I have to say, that based on my family and friends who I | occasionally watch TV shows and movies with, I'm the only | person who is able to focus on the TV screen without my | phone in sight. Everyone else I know is constantly half- | listening, half-watching, while simultaneously browsing IG, | Zillow, YT, TikTok, etc. I think our very real phone | addictions are going to play an adverse role in VR adoption | until the VR app space fully replaces everything in the | mobile app space (plus the time it will take for people to | break their phone habits and replace them with VR | habits)... seems like a uphill slog for Meta. | Firmwarrior wrote: | I used to do that a lot, and I finally realized that I | actually didn't care about what was on the TV and just | started leaving it off. Either a show is worth actually | watching or it isn't IMO. | | I guess it's a little bit of a different story if it's | just the centerpiece of family time, though.. | daniel_reetz wrote: | Powerful insight. And the tech giants own phone addiction | - as a product and data source - also slows the progress | of all AR and VR efforts. | ryandrake wrote: | The first killer accessory in the metaverse will be some | kind of pass-through phone gateway or phone proxy that | people can use as a substitute for their physical phone, | to satiate their compulsive need to (ABC) Always Be | Checking it. I don't see people accepting strapping on a | headset that blocks access to their primary addiction. | zmmmmm wrote: | I don't think it'll be particularly hard to mirror your | phone screen into your virtual space. Closely similar | things are already done in a bunch of apps. | kibwen wrote: | The mental image of a bunch of virtual avatars sitting at | a table on the moon all silently staring at their virtual | phones and scrolling through reddit seems so hilariously | stupid that it just might happen. | jitl wrote: | > I'm the only person who is able to focus on the TV | screen | | I don't know why you'd want to do so for most TV. I like | to idly code at 1/4 speed during average shows. Like if | the cousins want to watch Moana for the 34th time, I'm | not gonna dedicate my full attention the whole time, but | I do want to hang out with everyone else in the family. | | On the other hand, I've never wanted to pick up a phone | while my VR headset is on my head. It's engrossing! But | the downside of VR is that it's so isolating. There's no | way for me to be half in a head-mounted display. No one | can casually look over my shoulder, nor can I causally | peek up from my screen when someone says something | interesting. | GiorgioG wrote: | > TV sets are not a given anymore | | Everyone I know has at least one TV. You can buy a 58" TV | at Walmart for $298. That's less expensive than an Xbox or | PS console. | hnthrowaway0328 wrote: | I actually think we had those escapes since I-don't-know- | when. People don't need to actually _see_ virtual reality to | escape from reality. Actually a good book does a good job | too. | mikkergp wrote: | Echoing your thoughts, I used a friends Oculus and it was | really awesome and inspiring and had echoes of that tech I | fantasize from science fiction novels. But after five minutes | it was really like, I can't wait for version 17 of this | thing, because it's so close and yet so far. | listless wrote: | I want VR to be a thing. I want Ready Player One. I want the | Star Trek Holodeck. | | But I also want a time machine. And honestly, that seems | almost as likely as the metaverse ever being a "thing". The | technology simply doesn't exist and we are so far off that | pivoting to it now seems...either wildly optimistic or HBO | Silicon Valley level out of touch. | newaccount2021 wrote: | q-big wrote: | > It resonates very strongly with my belief that VR/Metaverse | will continue to under deliver. | | Just offer VR porn applications, and a lot of people will | urge to get a VR headset and a decent computer to support it. | For a lot of kinds of media, porn was the killer application. | kibwen wrote: | _wldu wrote: | I attended a USENIX LISA conference a few years ago in Seattle. | I met a lot of people and saw a lot of demos. Before I went, I | thought Facebook was a joke. After the conference, I was | convinced they were doing large systems better than _anybody_. | | Maybe that has changed, but at that time they made the other | big companies look like they were way behind. | toast0 wrote: | Disclosure: I worked at WhatsApp, part of Facebook, until the | end of 2019. | | If you think the name change means they're focusing on the | metaverse, that's just convenient. The fact is, Facebook is a | toxic brand and Meta is just a silly looking brand. Post name | change, they can do acquisitions and brand them as X by Meta | without associating to the toxic brand. (Plus, maybe they can | get the Mennen ad team to add 'by Meta' to the end of all their | ads with audio) | bozhark wrote: | Reality: the name change doesn't hide anything. | | Neat to think they believe it does. | colinmhayes wrote: | They wouldn't have done it if they didn't have evidence | showing that you are wrong. | aantix wrote: | Apple AR is coming.. | | https://twitter.com/BasicAppleGuy/status/1531737446534131713 | mmaunder wrote: | Don't confuse investor sobriety after an epic party with | strategic miscalculation. | | Zuck is taking a gamble. Good for him. It's extremely rare for | a big co to have the balls and for leadership to have the | autonomy to do this these days. He has both. | | He may fail. But at least he took a big hairy audacious risky | shot at first to market and a chance at being what Steve Jobs | is to smart phones. | | I wouldn't count him out just yet. What he's doing with Oculus | as a loss leader is interesting, and the tech is hitting an | interesting inflection point as it becomes wireless, low | latency and cheap for the first time. | | Hate on FB and confirm your biases all you want, but watch this | space. | kilroy123 wrote: | I think Zuch is right about VR and the whole metaverse. I just | think Meta (Facebook) won't be the ones to pull it off. | | It'll be the _Next_ Facebook that does. | paxys wrote: | The pivot to Meta is genius because it helps to move away from | the Facebook brand, which is more and more toxic by the day. | Whether the future of the company is the "metaverse" that Zuck | is selling, or doubling down on Instagram or Whatsapp, or some | other yet known product line remains to be seen. What we do | know is that the Facebook app (and name) is on the the path to | irrelevance. | berberous wrote: | Well, I strongly disagree. | | I would be shocked if VR/metaverse does not massively grow | within the next 10 years. I think the headsets alone will | continue to get massively better which will convert most of | humanity, just like how much better iPhones got since the first | one. In fact, I would bet anything on the foregoing, as I have | near total confidence in that aspect. | | It's much harder to figure out which companies will profit off | of that, so it's certainly possible Meta will miss. But they | have a leader with a vision, and are pouring more money into | this than any other major player. Will that be enough? Who | knows. But I think it's a mistake to count them out so early in | the process, when they are the ones putting R&D into this. | | In my mind, it's like starting an auto company right when cars | arrive and people are still skeptical of them, and being the | company to pour the most money into developing them. That's who | you want to bet against? | | Taxes and moderation are considerations, sure, and may backfire | partly, but I think the users will go where the tech is. Just | like people buy iPhones not withstanding the cost, moderation, | App Store tax, etc, because the iPhone is what users want. If | Meta makes an excellent headset and software platform, people | will use it. Most people don't care about the things HN cares | about (like App Store fees). | HWR_14 wrote: | > Just like people buy iPhones not withstanding the cost, | moderation, App Store tax, etc, because the iPhone is what | users want. | | Unless you jailbreak it or turn on _scary developer mode_ all | those apply on Android too. Hell, iPhones are cheaper than | some Android flagships now. | rm_-rf_slash wrote: | All the parts and pieces to make the iPhone were available in | the 2000s. | | I'm not so sure about VR. It's a huge power hog. Either the | battery life would be limited or you'd need to carry around a | backpack to keep it running or it would stay at your desk | with more wires in your head than a William Gibson | protagonist. | | I could see some limited use cases for VR, like training and | education. But as a replacement of the world in the way | smartphones have been? I just don't get how that will be | physically/technologically possible. | | But if there's evidence to the contrary believe me I would | love to change my mind. | berberous wrote: | To be clear, I don't think most people will live in VR for | all of their waking life (although some will). | | But I do think VR has the potential to be "huge" like | cellphones, in the way that nearly every kid in the world | has a headset, and spends hours of time in there each day. | I think it can eat up a ton of time currently spent on | movies, TV, video games, socializing in places like | Minecraft or Roblox, concerts, sports games, etc. The | average person spends way too much time watching TV for | example, but if every kid in the world wants to spend 2 | hours per day in VR instead of watching TV, that will be an | enormous TAM notwithstanding that people won't want to | literally live in VR with all day battery life. Although | there will always be outliers, and I think there will be | many people that will easily choose to spend 8 hours + per | day in VR. | | And even currently, the Quest 2 provides hours of battery | life without wires, which will only continue to improve. | | How old are you by the way? Today phones last nearly all | day, but people used to carry around multiple phones for | their batteries and swap them out. IF they are at home, | they could do the same with VR until the battery life | improves. | _fat_santa wrote: | FB/Meta seems to be transitioning into a tech conglomerate. For | the longest time (and even now), you associate FB/Meta with | Facebook (ie facebook.com). But it's clear that the | facebook.com product is dying. If Meta survives the next 10-20 | years, I see them move to a model where they are a tech | conglomerate. | | The new generation won't associate FB/Meta with Facebook, they | will associate it with Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and any | future acquisitions. I'm sure facebook.com will still be | kicking around, maybe just the popular features like | Marketplace and Pages sans the traditional news feed and | updates. | | IMO this is the only way I see this company surviving. And the | reason I haven't mentioned the Metaverse is because I | personally think that it will be a giant ass flop right out of | the gate. | konschubert wrote: | Right business move would have been to just keep enough | engineers to keep facebook and instagram running. Cut costs | aggressively and milk that slowly sinking ship for the next 3 | decades. | | Oh, and invest into whatsapp. | beambot wrote: | Consider for a moment that Metaverse as a "product" is a | thinly-veiled smokescreen to deflect government regulators away | from monetization of their monopoly on the Western social | graph, and it doesn't seem that misguided. And if the product | somehow generates revenue in the future, then it's just | fortuitous happenstance. | propogandist wrote: | this is the correct answer. Everything from FB so far has | been a huge PR campaign to make it seem as if they aren't a | data mining company that hoards as much data as possible to | serve ads. Most people are being fooled and FB is going the | extra mile to distance themselves from their old image to | avoid regulatory scrutiny. | deeptote wrote: | I don't know anyone under 50 who actively uses Facebook. | therealmarv wrote: | That's in your local bubble. In some countries Facebook is | no. 1 and on same level or even more important as Google Maps | for businesses. Wished it was not the case though. | dwallin wrote: | These kinds of changes always start in some sort of | localized group or community. While it's wise to not assume | that every small movement is going to turn into a large | one, it's still worth paying attention to what's going on | at the fringes so that you don't get caught with your pants | down. | | As another anecdote, Facebook has died out amongst my peer | group, it used to be heavily used for event planning | amongst friends but now it's been abandoned despite no good | replacements in the wings because nobody is on Facebook to | see your events. Instead we are back to using text messages | and emails. | dont__panic wrote: | They did it to themselves. The minute your | feed/notifications went so ad-filled and algorithm-driven | that you couldn't find events and announcements before | they happened... Facebook killed the golden goose. | rjzzleep wrote: | Taiwanese even use it as some sort of blogging platform. | scarface74 wrote: | And those countries have a much lower ARPU. Facebook | staying dominant in those countries is at best a Pyrrhic | victory. | tablespoon wrote: | > That's in your local bubble. In some countries Facebook | is no. 1 and on same level or even more important as Google | Maps for businesses. Wished it was not the case though. | | Facebook is an American company, if it fails in that | market, it will most likely eventually fail globally as | well. Orkut being super popular in India and Brazil didn't | save it. | [deleted] | cloutchaser wrote: | I know many people under 50 who use instagram. Almost | everyone in fact. | t-sauer wrote: | Just Facebook itself or also Instagram and Whatsapp? | scelerat wrote: | I don't know anyone who uses Facebook creatively or as a | primary vehicle for widely-shared creative or entertaining | content. Certainly nothing like Instagram or TikTok. | jkaptur wrote: | Almost everyone I know under 50 uses WhatsApp and/or | Instagram multiple times per day. | bonzini wrote: | WhatsApp is not making any money though, they bought it | just because it competed with Messenger on B2C. | threeseed wrote: | Almost everyone I know under 50 doesn't use WhatsApp and/or | Instagram multiple times per day. | | I wonder what insights we can extrapolate to billions of | people from our sample size of 2. | skinnymuch wrote: | Their anecdote is worth a lot more. Most people under 50 | that any one knows don't use almost every thing. It | likely isn't true that no one is using it around you. | I've had a friend say that before when I know mutual | friends who use it. There's too many different things so | most things won't be used among any ones anecdotes. For | something to be used in different anecdotes is a pretty | big deal. | | Are you using FB and IG and have tried friends most | people you know and actively check if people are around | those platforms or how else would you know? I find it | hard to believe much of any one who is active on the | internet does not know any one who does not use FB or IG. | There are a lot more people on IG than most people | realize because of it being harder to find people. For a | community I run, no one knew half of the other members on | IG until I listed everyone out to members. | mrits wrote: | I'm 40 and never been on either of those. Facebook came out | when I was in college. If I didn't have it I don't have a | good alternative to keeping track of all the friends I made | at that time. I'm sure I'm not alone with that. | stevofolife wrote: | I use it everyday. What's up? | chrischen wrote: | I see a lot of young people who end up creating (mostly | empty) Facebook profiles jut to use the groups features or | for events. There still isn't a good alternative to those on | Intagram or other platforms, and my guess is as young people | get older they start having to use Facebook in some way. | boshalfoshal wrote: | Why do people always bring this up when people talk about | "Facebook"? Whenever I see people use "Facebook" used to | describe the company, I think of all the products they offer, | not just facebook.com. | | With that being said, anecdotally, in younger (American) | circles, facebook.com isn't used much as a social | media/content sharing platform. However, other facebook | (meta) products like messenger, and instagram are still used | a ton, not to mention facebook.com "subproducts" like | marketplace, or using facebook pages to act as a landing page | for a business. Just because younger people don't use | facebook.com doesn't mean they have little relevance within | that subgroup. | | This isn't even including the huge influence of whatsapp, | granted it still(?) doesn't generate any revenue. Facebook | developer products like react or pytorch also have a very | strong foothold among young developers. | dave5104 wrote: | > Why do people always bring this up when people talk about | "Facebook"? | | Wasn't one of the points of their recent rebrand to Meta to | better define "Facebook" as a singular product, and not the | company and its other products? | boshalfoshal wrote: | Correct, but in this particular context, the top level | comment used "Facebook" to refer to the collection of | products under the "Facebook" (meta) umbrella. So saying | "No young people use Facebook" implies that no one uses | instagram, whatsapp, etc. in this context :P | | I see this a lot in other threads pertaining to Meta/FB | but its all semantics at the end of the day. And even if | they are referring to "Facebook" the singular product | being irrelevant, its not really informative since at the | end of the day Facebook is a B2B company that sells data | and serves targeted ads. It doesn't matter if they get | that information to you through oculus, facebook.com, | instagram, or whatsapp, and as of now, their "core" | products (fb.com, instagram, whatsapp, messenger, oculus) | still cover a huge market of people they can glean data | from. | jedberg wrote: | My wife and I and most of our friends use it daily and we're | in our 40s. | | It's true that the 20somethinga don't use it much, but | they're all on Instagram. | [deleted] | wincy wrote: | I'm 35 and it's the only place to find and hang out with my | friends. I also post pictures of my kids so grandparents will | ooh and ahh. My wife gets hundreds of likes on her posts. | | Also the ads I get are generally shockingly relevant to me. I | buy stuff from Facebook ads sometimes. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | Yet somehow | | 1) Meta has a lot of active users across all of their | properties (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp). Even the core | Facebook product generates a lot of activity, which can be | seen from their financials. | | 2) The great majority of Facebook users are under 50 (Source: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/187549/facebook- | distribu... ) | | HN commenters (and their friends) don't overlap with | Facebook's userbase as much as the general population. It | doesn't make sense to try to extrapolate from individual | anecdotes when vast quantities of research and data are | available on the topic. It's reminiscent of people who refuse | to acknowledge climate change because it's not hot where they | live. Ignore your bubble, focus on the plentiful data | available. | dr_dshiv wrote: | What about whatsapp? It's huuuuuge. | seydor wrote: | Not necessarily a bad thing. The world is aging and old | people have all the money | dvt wrote: | Absolutely a bad thing. Young folks have less money, but | are more impulsive with spending. The 18-44 crowd is an | extremely coveted market segment. | mrits wrote: | Have you ever heard of the Home Shopping Network? | ilikehurdles wrote: | As the butt of jokes and target of mockery, yes. | mrits wrote: | It is an empire built on old people impulse shopping. | seydor wrote: | Can't buy things without money though. And it seems | studies show that people 50+ spend more | learndeeply wrote: | How is that related to Sheryl stepping down as COO at all? | davidg109 wrote: | Likely alluding that this was a major factor to her | resignation. | frisco wrote: | Honestly Peter stepping down from the board was a larger | signal to me. But it's just the totality of the data points. | seydor wrote: | She's abandoning the titanic | nowherebeen wrote: | She is also at that age where she can retire very | comfortably. It's a smart move by her. She can take a few | years off to recharge and if the right opportunity comes, | she will aim to be CEO of the next big thing. All she will | ever be at FB is COO. Staying on this sinking Titanic any | longer will only tarnish her business reputation. | polote wrote: | > but it really seems like they're on constant defense now and | have a very tough lift to actually get something truly mass | market | | What about the metaverse ? :) Isn't it something not defensing | and mass market ? | | I feel like you are reproaching Meta to not do exactly what | they do. They are having a massive innovative bet on how people | will spend their time in the future. | graycat wrote: | What are the _secrets_ to how they made 3 billion people so happy | to be users of Facebook (Meta)? Or, how the heck, 14 years ago, | or 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, could anyone have predicted | the 3 billion people? Astounding. Any ideas how to understand | that? | stareatgoats wrote: | The time for an online people-directory was ripe. There can | only be one such (for normal people), and Facebook made some | fortuitous strategic decisions early on (minimize ads, real | name policy, target university students, and more). Once | Facebook achieved critical mass then they just had to avoid | silly mistakes in order to succeed. | graycat wrote: | Why early on was Facebook so much more promising than | MySpace? | jbullock35 wrote: | And what made it more promising than Friendster? | temp_fb wrote: | 1024core wrote: | Note that while she linked to Dave's FB profile, she did not link | to (her new fiance) Tom's profile. I guess even those at the top | of FB value their privacy while they continue to invade ours....? | dylan604 wrote: | It'd have been better if she linked to Tom from MySpace profile | umeshunni wrote: | Looks linked to me. | seydor wrote: | do they really use FB? | saulpw wrote: | I think Sheryl Sandberg might go down as the Thomas Midgley Jr[0] | of the 21st century; the single person most responsible for | internet pollution and toxicity. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. | smt88 wrote: | Zuckerberg and Google have far more share of responsibility | than Sandberg, even though Sandberg is certainly also a morally | bankrupt person who enthusiastically contributed to the poor | state of modern society. | vineyardmike wrote: | Except Sheryl is responsible ads at both FB and Google. | | Maybe it's not just one company. But the industry. Or maybe | it's her ;) | gowld wrote: | She worked on them, and maybe made them more successful. | | DoubleClick launched in 1996 and merged with Google in | 2007. | | Google bought Urchin and Adaptive Path / Measure Map in | 2005. | | The ad and tracking industry was not due to one person's | influence. | smt88 wrote: | Zuckerberg was the ultimate authority at Facebook. | Everything the company did is his responsibility. | nobbis wrote: | Explains the huge remodel of her property here in South Lake. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-01 23:00 UTC)