FB went all in on Metaverse reminded me of Google between 2007-2012 when they mobilized the whole company and invested heavily around social with OpenSocial, Google Circle etc. Google eventually realized that's not their core strength and moved on, let's see what will FB do.
Google didn't voluntarily move on from Google Plus. They were forced out because they lost, badly, and the company they lost to was Facebook. I wouldn't count Zuckerberg and co. out yet. Unlike Google management, he is not afraid to commit to a new direction completely.
To glom Buzz/Salmon/OpenSocial (the great intertwingularizing era, circa 2008) & Google Circle together is to marry night & day. These are opposite ends, opposite realms. Buzz, Salmon Protocol, OpenSocial: these were hopeful, strong, API oriented, pro-value-creation protocol-based interoperable ways of connecting the world, making new system creation possible. Engineers doing internet engineering things, trying to build an ecosystem for interconnection.
Google didn't realize building healthy, interoperable, internet technology wasn't their core strength & drop it. The story is much sadder. Their new head guy showed up & personally demanded things go his way & that everyone build his pet project, Google Plus. A vanity Facebook competitor with a real name policy, with no extropic/network benefits, no connection to the rest of the net (although you could send some data in to it: literally it's only api, one method): just another shitty little social app.
Google eventually realized this product was trash & insisting every team creatively find ways to interoperate with it was a mess, and canned this shitty little social app. (One I used & enjoyed, but which was of scant real enduring value, was deeply disconnected.)
There's two eras here. They look like opposite ends, to me.
As for Meta. Well. There is a lot of the vanity project bent, judging the book by it's cover. But I also think it's good to increase the engineering challenges, to go big. To find new hard problems. Google Plus was just a cheap knock off, a facsimile, with some narrow twists (Circles). Facebook is at least trying something. I have sincere doubts about headsets, but the idea of virtual place, & of re-materializing the virtual makes a lot of sense to orient & re-ground (what a pun) computing - could do a lot. But Meta could walk either of the two Google paths I just described: they could walk the open, interoperable, ecosystem path & kickstart a new era in computing with a buoyant healthy technical ecosystem, or they could walk the Google Plus era path & create a closed, proprietary product or series of products that try to succeed so strongly on their own that they inflate a new market singlehandedly.
I think (and hope) you're right, but Google was just moving in a general direction. With the announcement and even -name change-, it feels way more invested than Google ever was. Would be really weird to undo all that.
I believe FB is gone metaverse because they made such a dramatic shift from desktop to mobile, what 10 years ago ? That was obviously widely successful but catching lightening twice is no easy feat.
Problem with Facebook is that they can’t acquire anyone due to their notoriety. They should have been able to use all the cash generated in the past five years to purchase a bunch of assets like Microsoft. At the end of the day, they have a bad branding problem. Need a fresh start with new management which we know is never going to happen.
Not a fresh start necessarily. What they need is (a) changing how they're run and what their goals are (which apparently hasn't happened) and (b) sending honest signals [1] thay they have done so.
They did use all that money to overpay market value for a lot of engineers, data scientist, etc. They were particularly aggressive the past 2 years during the pandemic, but a lot of those hires are now getting paid 20% less on their overall comp.
That’s not really why the market is reacting here, thats an old story as the potential monetization phase has already been replaced by actual monetization. The new story is that a bunch less people are willing to spend on ads at all, specifically citing broad market constrained budgets due to inflation and supply chain issues. This is a heavy indication of the state of many sectors, pretty fascinating ripple.
Also Apple protecting consumers and democracy from ad targeting is working, at least against Facebook.
I rarely use Facebook, but recently got into ebikes and it seems the best communities are using Facebook Groups, so I've been using FB more in the past month than in the past decade.
It's awful.
Rather than just showing me a chronological feed of new group posts, Facebook wants to control the stream so they can 1) monetize it with ads and 2) increase engagement by suggesting other content. And they're so devious about it - the first half dozen posts in your feed are from your subs, but then Facebook starts to slip in recommended content in the middle of your subs.
Amusingly, because I've got ad blocking at various levels (browser and DNS), Facebook's systems apparently have no idea of my preferences or even my general profile or demographic. If an ad does sneak through because it's served off a non-blacklisted server, it's always completely irrelevant and many times offensive: Meeting singles, anything MAGA, essential oils, etc. The group recommendations and inserted posts are random as it gets: Spider-Man Fans, Kittens, Dallas Cowboys, Love Quotes, Old School Hip-hop, Soup Lovers, and more. (These are real suggestions I just pulled right now).
What's amazing about this is that Facebook has all my info. It knows where I live, how old I am, what topics I've explicitly chosen to follow. And yet it ignores all that and relies on data gathered from spying on you instead.
Add to this the fact that scrolling for any amount of time through my groups will 100% crash the tab in Chrome on my Android tablet. 100% of the time. This is all Facebook is! How can their development be so bad for their basic functionality? Because they hate the open web and want you to use their app, which I refuse to do.
Facebook's number one priority before anything else is monetization. Any feature or setting which may be beneficial to the end user is secondary.
- Why can't I pay money and turn off ads?
- Why can't I set my feeds to chronological order
permanently?
- Why can't I turn off suggested content?
- Why aren't my profile information and interests I explicitly entered respected?
- Why can't I filter my feed to strip out any news items and only see updates and photos?
- Why does Facebook's web app crash so much doing basic scrolling?
I've been amazed for over a decade at Facebook's continued growth. But my son and his friends never use it, so I think like all social networks, it will soon go away. Another 10 years and they might literally have more deceased users than active ones.
Speaking of censorship, I swear there was once a parody of Right Said Fred that went "I'm too meta..." and yet Google finds no evidence. Not even when using keywords like "yankovic" or "demento". I want the lyrics!
[+] [-] donsupreme|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Miraste|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|4 years ago|reply
Google didn't realize building healthy, interoperable, internet technology wasn't their core strength & drop it. The story is much sadder. Their new head guy showed up & personally demanded things go his way & that everyone build his pet project, Google Plus. A vanity Facebook competitor with a real name policy, with no extropic/network benefits, no connection to the rest of the net (although you could send some data in to it: literally it's only api, one method): just another shitty little social app.
Google eventually realized this product was trash & insisting every team creatively find ways to interoperate with it was a mess, and canned this shitty little social app. (One I used & enjoyed, but which was of scant real enduring value, was deeply disconnected.)
There's two eras here. They look like opposite ends, to me.
As for Meta. Well. There is a lot of the vanity project bent, judging the book by it's cover. But I also think it's good to increase the engineering challenges, to go big. To find new hard problems. Google Plus was just a cheap knock off, a facsimile, with some narrow twists (Circles). Facebook is at least trying something. I have sincere doubts about headsets, but the idea of virtual place, & of re-materializing the virtual makes a lot of sense to orient & re-ground (what a pun) computing - could do a lot. But Meta could walk either of the two Google paths I just described: they could walk the open, interoperable, ecosystem path & kickstart a new era in computing with a buoyant healthy technical ecosystem, or they could walk the Google Plus era path & create a closed, proprietary product or series of products that try to succeed so strongly on their own that they inflate a new market singlehandedly.
[+] [-] silisili|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Irishsteve|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Melatonic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lvl100|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajkjk|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory
[+] [-] donsupreme|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
Also Apple protecting consumers and democracy from ad targeting is working, at least against Facebook.
[+] [-] Melatonic|4 years ago|reply
I do not want to see that happen
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4...
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
Tells you why Google is paying Apple and how much Apple potentially could extract.
[+] [-] steelstraw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] llampx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ejb999|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bot41|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russellbeattie|4 years ago|reply
It's awful.
Rather than just showing me a chronological feed of new group posts, Facebook wants to control the stream so they can 1) monetize it with ads and 2) increase engagement by suggesting other content. And they're so devious about it - the first half dozen posts in your feed are from your subs, but then Facebook starts to slip in recommended content in the middle of your subs.
Amusingly, because I've got ad blocking at various levels (browser and DNS), Facebook's systems apparently have no idea of my preferences or even my general profile or demographic. If an ad does sneak through because it's served off a non-blacklisted server, it's always completely irrelevant and many times offensive: Meeting singles, anything MAGA, essential oils, etc. The group recommendations and inserted posts are random as it gets: Spider-Man Fans, Kittens, Dallas Cowboys, Love Quotes, Old School Hip-hop, Soup Lovers, and more. (These are real suggestions I just pulled right now).
What's amazing about this is that Facebook has all my info. It knows where I live, how old I am, what topics I've explicitly chosen to follow. And yet it ignores all that and relies on data gathered from spying on you instead.
Add to this the fact that scrolling for any amount of time through my groups will 100% crash the tab in Chrome on my Android tablet. 100% of the time. This is all Facebook is! How can their development be so bad for their basic functionality? Because they hate the open web and want you to use their app, which I refuse to do.
Facebook's number one priority before anything else is monetization. Any feature or setting which may be beneficial to the end user is secondary.
- Why can't I pay money and turn off ads?
- Why can't I set my feeds to chronological order permanently?
- Why can't I turn off suggested content?
- Why aren't my profile information and interests I explicitly entered respected?
- Why can't I filter my feed to strip out any news items and only see updates and photos?
- Why does Facebook's web app crash so much doing basic scrolling?
I've been amazed for over a decade at Facebook's continued growth. But my son and his friends never use it, so I think like all social networks, it will soon go away. Another 10 years and they might literally have more deceased users than active ones.
[+] [-] changxi_hn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analogdreams|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vba616|4 years ago|reply