[HN Gopher] A Meta Analysis on Meta
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A Meta Analysis on Meta
Author : alibova
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-10-31 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (depression2022.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (depression2022.substack.com)
| mkl95 wrote:
| > Meta needs to generate $200B+ of profits on metaverse during
| 2030-2039 to make it worth it
|
| Is it too late for Meta to admit the Metaverse has been a mistake
| and shift their efforts to something else? And what would that
| something else be?
| csdvrx wrote:
| I don't think it's a mistake. They are just too early.
|
| Look at how Microsoft correctly identified tablet and
| smartphone as part of the future, as early as 20 years ago when
| they had special Windows XP tablet and custom Windows CE
| environment.
|
| People often talk about the first mover advantage, but it can
| also be a curse: that's why Google ate Microsoft lunch, and why
| Facebook ate Myspace lunch, and why Microsoft ate IBM lunch
| etc.
|
| If Microsoft hadn't thrown the tower with Windows Phones, the
| present could have been very different!
|
| Now they are playing catchup, and I think that's what FB (now
| Meta) wants to avoid.
|
| Some companies manage to pivot (ex: Netflix did) but most
| can't: for example, Palm who couldn't leave PalmOS behind.
| Nokia also fumbled, even with the help of Microsoft, because
| they couldn't bear sacrificing their Symbian cash cow.
|
| Same for Microsoft actually: Windows 8 was too little too late,
| and the switch from CE to Windows Mobile 6 then 7 then 10 did
| spread too thin the developer attention: having to use a
| different language + UI each time required too much effort for
| too little gains.
|
| Windows 10 managed to correct the course, and Windows 11 is
| surprisingly good, but it may be too late and playing catchup
| with Android is not a nice position.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just like a baseball bat swinging at a pitch, too early is
| just as much a mistake as too late. Microsoft is indeed a
| good reference point here.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Windows CE released in 1996.
|
| Apple Newton (hardware & OS) released in 1993 and
| discontinued in 1998.
|
| Palm Pilot introduced in 1997.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'm not sure it was a mistake though. You have to ask yourself
| what marks goals are here. To me, being cash flow positive is
| pretty far down the list. Meta could have results like the one
| last week for a decade and mark would still be a billionaire.
| He'd still be the ceo of his company. Pleasing Wall Street is
| not a priority for him. To me the main goals here are first
| creating a hardware platform meta controls in order to ensure
| his company can't be destroyed by other companies taxing him
| like apple did, and second I do think that mark is legitimately
| committed to connecting people whatever that means to him.
| Reality labs still seems like a good way to accomplish these
| goals even if it isn't financially worth it.
| andsoitis wrote:
| As a publicly traded company, there's a fiduciary
| responsibility to shareholders.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Which is why mark leaves the credible deniability of saying
| he believes reality labs is an investment that will pay off
| for shareholders. My reading of corporate fiduciary
| responsibility cases is that believing your actions are in
| the shareholders best interest is all that is required and
| proving that mark doesn't seems impossible.
| tptacek wrote:
| This isn't an especially useful frame. Lots of things make
| sense if you put yourself in Zuckerberg's shoes and assume he
| minmaxes for whatever random thing has captured his
| attention.
|
| The real question is, what should Meta shareholders do in
| response to this stuff? What would happened with respect to
| the shareholders if Zuckerberg took his foot off the gas
| pedal with the "Metaverse" stuff?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I mean they only really have two choices. Stick with meta
| and hope mark gets distracted from the reality labs stuff
| or sell. Most seem to have chosen to sell.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right. Over the coming years, the number of people who
| choose to sell, buy, or hold will determine the outcome
| of the Metaverse experiment. So that's the right frame
| here, not whether Zuckerberg can continue pursuing it ---
| if only because the Zuckerberg question is much less
| interesting to think about.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It's an incredibly useful frame if the question is "Should
| Meta admit the metaverse is a mistake?"
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| > The real question is, what should Meta shareholders do in
| response to this stuff? What would happened with respect to
| the shareholders if Zuckerberg took his foot off the gas
| pedal with the "Metaverse" stuff?
|
| Meta shareholders signed up for the double class share
| agreement which enables Zuck to do whatever he wants.
|
| And besides it's is kind of right, given the past execution
| ever since 2004 he kinda earned the right to bet the
| company on something new. Billions of people use the
| different flavors of Meta , and they do sohundreds if not
| thoudands of times per day. Nobody else can claim to having
| provided quality of life to so many people.
| tptacek wrote:
| They gave up one means they had to influence Meta's
| behavior: they can't vote him out. But shareholders
| almost never vote anybody out regardless of how the share
| class structure is set up. So the real question is: will
| they continue to hold Meta's stock?
| mathattack wrote:
| It's not too late. The money they spent is a sunk cost. If all
| they did was say, "We are going to milk advertising and give
| our cash to shareholders" they would do just fine.
|
| Or they could focus on creating the next social network.
|
| But... Maybe just maybe they pull this off. I just have a great
| idea on Mark's product intuition, since so much of Meta's
| growth has been data analysis driven.
| moolcool wrote:
| > But... Maybe just maybe they pull this off
|
| It would be bad if they pull it off. I dread the day
| draconian call center employers make their workers put on
| headsets and track their eye movements for 8 hours a day, all
| while charging them for a virtual cubicle with a view. Look
| at the marketing materials for their latest headset, that's
| the way it's going.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Granted in more bullish on VR than most, but I'm skeptical
| of the scenario you're dreading- outside of the world
| "virtual" I think that entire situation is possible today,
| but it hasn't happened yet. Call center employees are
| already required to wear headsets, and if you're sitting in
| front of a laptop there's nothing technical preventing your
| employer from implementing an eye-tracking computer vision
| powered panopticon.
| kypro wrote:
| I'll provide an opinion I think is likely untrue, but interesting
| to consider here. I think there is a small but possible chance
| that these moves from Zuck coupled with the rebrand are likely
| attempts to intentionally scare of investors and drop the stock
| price.
|
| In my opinion Zuck has been acting weird since the Apple's
| privacy change announcement. I'm not a long-term shareholder of
| META/FB, but I have followed the companies IR material for some
| time and I've never seen Zuck act like this before. On the last
| few earnings calls it's hard at times not to wonder if he's
| trying to make investors nervous...
|
| For example, telling investors that they didn't see the Tiktok
| threat coming. Or that Apple's privacy change is a serious threat
| to their business. Or just recently that he "thinks" (very
| unconvincingly) that their huge Metaverse investments will pay
| off.
|
| One of the main problems Meta has today is that despite their
| relatively weak moat compared to other big tech companies that
| they're treated with far more scrutiny from regulators. And on
| the flip side you have for dominant companies like Apple which
| are literally destroying the ad business model that many tech
| companies rely on while demanding a 30% tax from developers and
| attracting relatively little regulatory attention.
|
| One of the things that has made Meta such a strong player
| historically has been their ability to make very smart
| accusations, but this is no longer possible because regulators
| see them as such a dominant player. In some ways Meta was
| actually strategically stronger as a smaller player.
|
| So perhaps this is just part of the strategy. Historically if you
| want Western governments to give you a bit of a hand then being
| out competed by companies in hostile countries isn't a bad move.
| Similarly if you want to stop companies like Apple from targeting
| you then making it look like they're doing an unreasonable amount
| of damage to your business, probably isn't a bad move either.
|
| And Zuck is an interesting position given the share structure of
| the company. Where other companies would have to bend to
| investors, Zuck can force down the stock price and ignore
| investor demands. Again, I'm not saying I think he is doing this,
| but it's an explanation I'm beginning to weight heavier.
| peppertree wrote:
| Meta also let Facebook rot. Didn't come up with anything
| competitive against TikTok. Couldn't monetize Whatsapp and turn
| it into a superapp like WeChat. There are just failures on every
| front.
| echelon wrote:
| > First, I would not have let the Apple relationship slide so far
| down.
|
| I don't like Meta, but this is an unfair assessment. Meta saw
| Google's deal and likely tried to pay these fees. They've been
| trying desperately for years - they knew this was possible and
| saw the writing on the well.
|
| They tried launching their own phone product and learned
| firsthand how difficult to impossible it was to compete in that
| space. And unlike with Microsoft, this was an existential issue
| for Meta. That's largely what Metaverse itself is.
|
| Apple has 100% of the leverage and is building their own ad
| product, so they likely turned Meta down with zero recourse.
|
| _Apple has too much power._
|
| With one flip of a switch, Apple wiped out hundreds of billions
| of dollars. The entire business of a company. This is monopoly.
|
| Apple captured half of American computing and taxes everything
| that can possibly be done. Subscriptions, social networking,
| dating, movies, you name it.
|
| At no point in American history has a company had this much
| power.
|
| Meta is trying to build the next platform so that they can be the
| ones to control it. These sorts of total platform monopolization
| plays are bad for technology, smaller businesses (even 10B market
| cap ones), and innovation. The DOJ needs to step in and do its
| job.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > With one flip of a switch, Apple wiped out hundreds of
| billions of dollars. The entire business of a company. This is
| monopoly.
|
| This is a ridiculous way to characterize a business presenting
| its customers an option to not be tracked by other businesses.
| nwienert wrote:
| > With one flip of a switch, Apple wiped out hundreds of
| billions of dollars. The entire business of a company. This is
| monopoly.
|
| You can easily re-frame this as: with the flip of a switch
| Apple single handedly stopped anti-consumer practices by some
| of the most manipulative and nefarious companies in the world,
| like Facebook.
|
| Companies don't have some inherent right to exist. Facebook
| turned off their game integrations and killed thousands of
| companies overnight. And that doesn't make either a monopoly.
| None of your statements add up to the other.
|
| > At no point in American history has a company had this much
| power.
|
| This is funny. Google has more power by a large margin
| (influencing opinion, killing off entire industries on a nearly
| yearly basis), and has engaged in much more nefarious anti-
| competitive behavior.
| runevault wrote:
| It is good Apple (and Google since last I heard they put
| similar functionality in place or would be soon) are doing
| this. That doesn't remove the concern that one or two
| companies deciding to do something can be so damaging to
| another megacorp who isn't competing in the same space
| really. Both can be true, speaking as someone who doesn't
| care for FB or Apple (or Google really either but to have a
| smartphone you basically have to pick one of the two).
| nvarsj wrote:
| It's bizarre to me that Apple has had no antitrust allegations
| yet. The way they manage iOS and the App Store is like a much
| worse version of Microsoft in the 90s.
| sp332 wrote:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/15/apples-
| antitrust-... Those are up to 2020. Last year there was a
| spotify complaint, and this year the DOJ said they're looking
| into the 30% cut the app store takes.
| Guthur wrote:
| I think the idea was ok but the execution was terrible.
|
| VR was too extreme and narrow a view. The meta verse should have
| been the extending the space where people and technology over
| lap, not trying to force everyone to move into frankly terrible
| VR.
|
| Meta should have went all in on wearable and other augmented
| reality stuff, hook that into people's Facebook etc.
|
| Imo, HN is probably the only social media I actually use.
| Sparingly as I'm more certain that much online discourse is pure
| fabrication.
| cma wrote:
| > Meta should have went all in on wearable and other augmented
| reality stuff, hook that into people's Facebook etc.
|
| Their new headset does grainy color AR passthrough and lots of
| the reports on how much they wasted on VR were actually on
| products like Portal and bringing AR filters onto their
| snapchat/tik tok clone attempts, they were in the same category
| on the earnings report without being broken out.
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