Is Meta A Sign Of Facebooks Final Fall?
Facebook is probably one of the biggest tech stories of the last 20 years, how did a simple college directory take over the world? Facebook was the right site at the right time, many had tried the idea before, but Facebook got in as internet bandwidth- and device connectivity would surge. More people would spend time online as it got cheaper and faster and the new user adoption of the internet seemed near endless.
Today Facebook is over 2 billion strong in users and sucks up a considerable amount of worldwide web traffic. It's become a platform for groups, content creators, news agencies, businesses, and even politicians to get their message out to a wider audience.
It refined targetting with its ability to collect so many user touch points and turned ad tech into a lucrative business. But the issue was Facebook cannot grow forever, it will hit a wall eventually and investors will move on to the next thing.
Consolidate competitors
Facebook's first strategy was to acquire companies and boy did it go on quite the spree, Facebook has acquired 78 companies over the past 15 years with the biggest names being:
- Instagram ($1 billion)
- WhatsApp ($19 billion)
- Oculus VR ($2 billion)
- com (undisclosed sum)
- LiveRail ($500 million)
- Threadsy (undisclosed sum)
Some products were shut down, others were integrated into their backend to over new platform services and others were able to stand on their own only providing data and new ad spots for Facebook.
Now acquisitions are a great way to reduce competition, improve your tech, bring in new talent and bring in new revenue streams. But as a long-term strategy, once you pick up names, people will start to overprice for what you're getting and you'll see diminishing returns.
Create new audiences
The next thing Facebook did was approach 3rd world countries in Asia and Africa and offer them free internet connection, with the condition that Facebook would be their homepage and a few partner sites. This limited form of the internet keeps users in Facebook's wall garden, creates a stream of new users and eyeballs for advertising.
Many of these people don't even know about the wider internet and use Facebook and the internet as interchangeable words. This was just a numbers game for shareholders but as a business move it doesn't do much as the price to target these users isn't as high as the users you want, which are the bigger economies, those with disposable income to spend and make your ad platform attractive to businesses.
Surprisingly a large portion of their earnings come from political parties who use Facebook in these countries to keep people informed or misinformed.
Two failed pivots
Facebook's core business is drying up and they know it, they have to do something soon and it needs to be big. They started off trying to bring in a stable coin with the libra/Diem project but that was mothballed by the US government. A move that could have seen them generate considerable revenues but it was not to be, the banks simply don't want the competition.
The next trend is the metaverse a perverse black mirror concept to try and capture more of your screen time and sensory data so they can use it to sell you ads and manipulate you for profit even more.
Personally, I don't see this trend catching on, it's just another overhyped VC and Silicon Valley narrative that will slowly fade into the background. It's novel but not practical, we already have a problem with too much screen time and bullshit unfulfilling jobs so playing into a trend that I think is in decline as the fiat system that funds it crumbles, is a brave bet but one I don't see paying off.
The market for people who are willing to waste their life on metaverse experiences are few, even fewer will waste their money on this nonsense. I just see this as another trend like Fortnite, it has a piece in human history but won't catch on.
I really think Meta is on its last legs and as bitcoin sucks up more of the monetary premium, the value sitting in facebook will be sucked out too.
I also think they are so big they are ready to be disrupted and smaller players are going to pick them off as they appeal to niches and new generations.
Have your say
What do you good people of HIVE think?
So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, "I am a Jessie."
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Good riddance. I will not lament the demise of any platform that engages in politically biased censorship.
Me neither, just seems like a waste of time and causing people a lot of unhappiness
Dear @chekohler , Do you think the metaverse isn't the goose that lays the golden eggs, but the illusion that it's a trap to suck money from blind people?
Certainly, very few people in the world I live in understand or use the metaverse. I just understand the metaverse as a space for online games that use avatars.
I think its just rehashing the second life project that failed miserably and thinking that people will fall for old shit again, which ofcourse some will and have, you can see a lot of brainless morons raving about it because their lives suck and they hope to live in a digital world where they can hide from their miserable selves
I agree with you! Many people are addicted to virtual reality games in order to forget the misery of their current lives. They live in virtual reality, enjoying the fabricated happiness that they live as gods or kings.
Fuck em, I’ll watch them fail!
I think the strangulation of the citizens of the world and siphoning every penny out of them has hurt this meta verse push considerably. If these psychos would make some sound economic decisions and help people prosper there would be more inclination to spend some fun money on the virtual stuff but especially with this global shit storm the last 2 years, most people are struggling too much to give a flying fuck about what these rich assholes are trying to float around. I’m glad it’s going to fail but it’s their own damn fault.
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