[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)