Facebook leadership is essentially a cat reacting to a laser pointer. There seems to be no shiny object they won't chase. Their own C-Suite admit their latest reorganization is a disaster. Their "all in" on virtual worlds was a disaster. Their billion dollar AI guru purchase was a disaster. Their influencer heavy connected glasses will be a disaster.
There is no leadership here. However, you can be sure when the next round of layoffs happen, there will be no "mea culpa" from the C-Suite, lots of golden parachutes and the unemployed will be the cogs in their wheel.
Sometimes I'm astonished how far they made it. But then again, they made their fortune by selling personal data to bad actors who manipulate opinions for polling and do all sorts of questionable dealings with it. And from there, they simply bought their competitors and maintained an extractive monopoly for people using social media for advertisement.
It's pretty much impossible that anything organic or creative could be created by Facebook at this point.
They treat employees like shite, and the only folks left or willing to join are the mercenaries. It is a testament to their business model that it survives in spite of all this.
> It is a testament to their business model that it survives in spite of all this.
The business model is pure moat. When the competition is bought up and new competition has it very hard to enter the market because your position is so utterly dominant, you don't need to innovate, you just milk everything you got to death, it's not like people have much of an alternative.
The only threat Meta has is Tiktok, and if I were to guess, we'll see Tiktok end up in Meta in a few years. Forcing Bytedance to sell off Tiktok with only 19.9% remaining in BD's hands was a necessary move given the serious national security implications, but eventually Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emiratis will want their money back, and the "best" way for the grift to finally complete will be for everyone of these three to sell their stake to Meta before a new administration can bring in a new FTC leadership to prevent such a merger.
Unfortunately they seem to be useful, if for no other reason than parents want to take picture of their children at a moment’s notice. AFAIK this is the killer app for these glasses.
They’re really very poor at this, the cameras are about what you’d get in a flip phone and are cropped vertical. I was expecting GoPro quality of capture but it’s a very limited field of view left to right and soft focus.
And that’s besides the point of psychological outcomes for the child of a parent always intermediating eye contact with eye-of-meta contact, like it’s one thing to be out in public and see someone who might be streaming, but growing up with the expectation that any action, any expression you give in a parents direction may be captured and played back? Awful.
Maybe for the dozens of people who are actually recording their feats of extreme sports the new oakleys are a good product market fit.
OTOH the audio experience was surprisingly good and if they made a pair without cameras I would buy them.
I wonder if it's still a good thing to have taken the picture. There's something to be said for pausing and having the conscious thought "this is a nice moment". (though of course, moderation in all things)
Wait until 10,000 manosphere influencers start selling personalize aura coaching to incels who share their glasses recordings. We'll start seeing those glasses on every lame-ass wannabro.
Truth is Zuckerberg doesn’t really like to succeed (and at this point he doesn’t even have to anymore, his family is set for life). He likes to struggle. It’s the only thing that gives that nostalgic feeling of being a scrappy startup trying to break into new markets.
At the end of the days, his legacy will be a few big wins and a long history of stuff he tried and failed at. That’s not really much different from any regular person’s life. Nothing to be ashamed of. As long as Meta still prints money, expect them to chase every trend for the next 40+ years.
Man I wish they would just chase fads. They chase the most morally corrupt version of a fad every time, it's like their business is black mirror episodes as a service.
This man struck gold exactly once with social media and, rather than being content with his billions, will forever chase that high pursuing the latest fad and drag his company through failure over and over again.
Zuck's a bit more private, but Musk putting his time into moderating Twitter demonstrates some of these people will never be content with finishing the game.
The parent seems to mean that he is content financially, which is why he can now play around with whatever he feels like and if it costs copious amounts of money to do so who cares?
He's a bit of a wuss though. Not betting it all, just slowly iterating on the next miss, can never be fired. Pretty damn funny actually. Sad if you work there though.
The fact that someone has billions of dollars and still chooses to spend 40-60 hours/week going to the office to work on Facebook seems psychotic. He can do practically anything he wants, and he chooses to work on Facebook. It’s mind bending.
At that level it’s not the luxury hotels and fresh mangoes flown in from Miami that appeals, but the influence to effect outcomes on a global scale. Megalomaniacal more than psychotic.
The guy has zero imagination, I guess. Even Facebook was a stolen and mostly unoriginal idea, it was just executed well for that era. I can only feel sad for him, all the money in the world yet not a single creative or interesting idea to allocate it on. And the unoriginal things it is allocated on end up being pretty bad most of the time.
Agreed that Zuck is not very impressive, but what would another CEO do differently at this point? Its got a ton of money, and they are trying this and that. But the market wouldn't let them sit on a bunch of money either.
considering his casual disregard for the feelings of fellow Harvard students back in the day, I doubt he cares what his legacy is. Just being rich and famous is plenty reward.
People forget that Meta already did this years ago, before prediction markets became the next big consumer trend for them to chase.
The app was called Forecast, and launched in June 2020. (Around the same time that Kalshi and Polymarket launched, actually!) It was framed as a way to make the comments and activity on Facebook actually productive rather than toxic, and build expert reputation signaling mechanisms.
Oh sure, why not. I suppose they’ve already ruled out selling vapes or meth, or at least haven’t added those business units to their annual filings yet.
I truly wonder if Meta’s Downfall as a Service umbrella has ever rejected an idea as being too detrimental to society, and if so, how awful did it have to be?
its not very expensive for a company like Meta to create a platform like this that could see them extract value as a middleman passively for a while.
despite the ethics of it, business wise it pays for itself, and because of the complicated ethics of it Meta is the best biggest company for it too. Everyone hates meta, their own employees hate meta, who cares. It will probably make money.
not only that, but I think when a big platform comes into play it gets users from the other platforms easily. As the opportunities for market mismatch are abound being a smaller platform in the beginning.
anyway, I think this is a smart move by Meta. And I'm positive everyone in the gambling space is happy with it too, as Meta comes with a good lobbying effort.
Facebook leadership is essentially a cat reacting to a laser pointer. There seems to be no shiny object they won't chase. Their own C-Suite admit their latest reorganization is a disaster. Their "all in" on virtual worlds was a disaster. Their billion dollar AI guru purchase was a disaster. Their influencer heavy connected glasses will be a disaster.
There is no leadership here. However, you can be sure when the next round of layoffs happen, there will be no "mea culpa" from the C-Suite, lots of golden parachutes and the unemployed will be the cogs in their wheel.
Sometimes I'm astonished how far they made it. But then again, they made their fortune by selling personal data to bad actors who manipulate opinions for polling and do all sorts of questionable dealings with it. And from there, they simply bought their competitors and maintained an extractive monopoly for people using social media for advertisement.
It's pretty much impossible that anything organic or creative could be created by Facebook at this point.
Let's not forget the cryptocurrency play (Libra)
> There is no leadership here
They treat employees like shite, and the only folks left or willing to join are the mercenaries. It is a testament to their business model that it survives in spite of all this.
> It is a testament to their business model that it survives in spite of all this.
The business model is pure moat. When the competition is bought up and new competition has it very hard to enter the market because your position is so utterly dominant, you don't need to innovate, you just milk everything you got to death, it's not like people have much of an alternative.
The only threat Meta has is Tiktok, and if I were to guess, we'll see Tiktok end up in Meta in a few years. Forcing Bytedance to sell off Tiktok with only 19.9% remaining in BD's hands was a necessary move given the serious national security implications, but eventually Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emiratis will want their money back, and the "best" way for the grift to finally complete will be for everyone of these three to sell their stake to Meta before a new administration can bring in a new FTC leadership to prevent such a merger.
Fail fast and iterate.
Wait no, not like that.
"Move fast and break things!"
"Oops, all broken."
The glasses, sadly, and unlike everything else, are incredibly popular and selling faster than they can make them
The glasses are a great way to make content, for better or worse. I’ve only really seen the worse side of it on my feed.
However, this is temporary. When people have seen enough fpv content it will stop getting engagement and the glasses will be forgotten.
Until society decides it doesn't want them again and deals with it.
Unfortunately they seem to be useful, if for no other reason than parents want to take picture of their children at a moment’s notice. AFAIK this is the killer app for these glasses.
They’re really very poor at this, the cameras are about what you’d get in a flip phone and are cropped vertical. I was expecting GoPro quality of capture but it’s a very limited field of view left to right and soft focus.
And that’s besides the point of psychological outcomes for the child of a parent always intermediating eye contact with eye-of-meta contact, like it’s one thing to be out in public and see someone who might be streaming, but growing up with the expectation that any action, any expression you give in a parents direction may be captured and played back? Awful.
Maybe for the dozens of people who are actually recording their feats of extreme sports the new oakleys are a good product market fit.
OTOH the audio experience was surprisingly good and if they made a pair without cameras I would buy them.
So many photos taken these days that are never going to be seen.
I wonder if it's still a good thing to have taken the picture. There's something to be said for pausing and having the conscious thought "this is a nice moment". (though of course, moderation in all things)
Whatever AI the feds buy will see them.
if only there was a place to share them, and that place actually showed them to the people who indicated that they wanted to see them.
Wait until 10,000 manosphere influencers start selling personalize aura coaching to incels who share their glasses recordings. We'll start seeing those glasses on every lame-ass wannabro.
Facebook (META) is the man in the arena.
Truth is Zuckerberg doesn’t really like to succeed (and at this point he doesn’t even have to anymore, his family is set for life). He likes to struggle. It’s the only thing that gives that nostalgic feeling of being a scrappy startup trying to break into new markets.
At the end of the days, his legacy will be a few big wins and a long history of stuff he tried and failed at. That’s not really much different from any regular person’s life. Nothing to be ashamed of. As long as Meta still prints money, expect them to chase every trend for the next 40+ years.
Man I wish they would just chase fads. They chase the most morally corrupt version of a fad every time, it's like their business is black mirror episodes as a service.
Smartphone
Dating
Cryptocurrency
AR/VR
AI
Gambling <— Zuck is here
This man struck gold exactly once with social media and, rather than being content with his billions, will forever chase that high pursuing the latest fad and drag his company through failure over and over again.
He has already finished the game and just explores the side quests. He is more than content, he’s way more content than the rest of us.
Zuck's a bit more private, but Musk putting his time into moderating Twitter demonstrates some of these people will never be content with finishing the game.
he is richer than any of us, but he doesn't strike me as someone who is even remotely content.
Those two things are not the same thing.
The parent seems to mean that he is content financially, which is why he can now play around with whatever he feels like and if it costs copious amounts of money to do so who cares?
He will never be generally content, no.
But wait, there’s more! Mark is also a big Dana White fan so now you also have Meta AI UFC Fighter Rankings
https://www.mmamania.com/ufc-mma-rankings/452601/ufc-finally...
He's a bit of a wuss though. Not betting it all, just slowly iterating on the next miss, can never be fired. Pretty damn funny actually. Sad if you work there though.
Okay, imagine if he did, he would've lost everything 4 times
> He's a bit of a wuss though
No no no, didn’t you see the MMA training. He’s a real tough guy. Very masculine and strong.
The fact that someone has billions of dollars and still chooses to spend 40-60 hours/week going to the office to work on Facebook seems psychotic. He can do practically anything he wants, and he chooses to work on Facebook. It’s mind bending.
At that level it’s not the luxury hotels and fresh mangoes flown in from Miami that appeals, but the influence to effect outcomes on a global scale. Megalomaniacal more than psychotic.
The guy has zero imagination, I guess. Even Facebook was a stolen and mostly unoriginal idea, it was just executed well for that era. I can only feel sad for him, all the money in the world yet not a single creative or interesting idea to allocate it on. And the unoriginal things it is allocated on end up being pretty bad most of the time.
all he needs to do is put a competent CEO
Agreed that Zuck is not very impressive, but what would another CEO do differently at this point? Its got a ton of money, and they are trying this and that. But the market wouldn't let them sit on a bunch of money either.
1. Rename the company to "Facebook"
2. Spin out the other garbage into different companies.
> rather than being content with his billions, will forever chase that high pursuing the latest fad
He is content with his billions. That is why he can piss it away on stupid ideas now.
Zuck simply cannot come to terms with the fact that his legacy is having built the world greatest ad platform.
Facebook is the 21st century version of the tabloid newspaper and daytime Jerry Springer. Highly lucrative, but bottom of the barrel stuff.
Launching a prediction market is exactly the type of thing I would expect from them.
considering his casual disregard for the feelings of fellow Harvard students back in the day, I doubt he cares what his legacy is. Just being rich and famous is plenty reward.
Maybe he should start a launch company with the stated goal of sending humans to Uranus or wherever it is he's from.
Second greatest.
People forget that Meta already did this years ago, before prediction markets became the next big consumer trend for them to chase.
The app was called Forecast, and launched in June 2020. (Around the same time that Kalshi and Polymarket launched, actually!) It was framed as a way to make the comments and activity on Facebook actually productive rather than toxic, and build expert reputation signaling mechanisms.
I think they sunset it after about a year.
Oh sure, why not. I suppose they’ve already ruled out selling vapes or meth, or at least haven’t added those business units to their annual filings yet.
I truly wonder if Meta’s Downfall as a Service umbrella has ever rejected an idea as being too detrimental to society, and if so, how awful did it have to be?
Funnily enough it's not their first attempt at launching a prediction market. They tried exactly the same in 2021 -> https://qz.com/2069284/facebook-is-shutting-down-its-experim...
its not very expensive for a company like Meta to create a platform like this that could see them extract value as a middleman passively for a while.
despite the ethics of it, business wise it pays for itself, and because of the complicated ethics of it Meta is the best biggest company for it too. Everyone hates meta, their own employees hate meta, who cares. It will probably make money.
not only that, but I think when a big platform comes into play it gets users from the other platforms easily. As the opportunities for market mismatch are abound being a smaller platform in the beginning.
anyway, I think this is a smart move by Meta. And I'm positive everyone in the gambling space is happy with it too, as Meta comes with a good lobbying effort.
this is reality, folks.
Makes sense, get the kids addicted to gambling and pull them into the platform.
How to tank morale even harder
With this being just "toy money" I predict it'll go as well in trying to copy the winners as threads did vs twitter.
Well, I guess they are familiar with how to make products addicting so this is right up their skill set?
Is it just me or is this really not that crazy of an idea?
Polls are already a thing, and people love giving their opinion on things.
Combining social media and gambling while maybe not morally great. Seems like has potential to make a shitton of cash.
Betting is all over the place right now.
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647928
Morale must be so in the dumps at Meta. No direction, no clear next thing... :(
A betting market??
Imagine being assigned to work on this only to be laid off a year later before quarterly earnings