Stop taking "the metaverse" seriously, please. It's a rich idiots dream, like a digital Fordlandia. I can hardly blame people for trying to follow trends, because following trends can be lucrative. "The metaverse" is just not the one to follow. It's nintendos virtualboy, vision getting ahead of substance, fixing problems we don't have. If it succeeds at all, it will be a testament to societies ability to bend to the whims of rich idiots. In Facebooks case, they should really try their hand at making a 2D world that doesn't lead people to want to die before they try to expand on the whole reality thing.

I'm getting really angry at companies squatting names that are basically common nouns. This practice should be banned. It's something I though was more cyberdystopian-esque not reality, but here we are in the future.

As somebody whose primary intellectual interest is how digital communities conceive of themselves and how cultures are curated online, I am not thrilled about 'Meta' to say the least.

Thanks for stealing the shorthand I had for explaining what interested me.

And never mind what a mess it's going to make for any of us who are interested in metadata versus data.

Thanks, Mark. I love it.

>"squatting names that are basically common nouns"

I feel like we should be using the term "scalping" instead. It is much more accurate.

That's probably not an ideal solution given the history of that word.

Perhaps, but scalping in the modern vernacular applies to people buying limited items and then price gouging because of scarcity. And, now that I think about it, "squatting" is also capable of carrying negative connotations when it comes to history in North America.

A land value tax solves this.

A land value tax in the metaverse - I hadn't considered that before. I wonder what cryptocurrency will be used in the metaverse?

You should probably google "Decentraland".

A land value tax for names? Or well copyrighted ones. I suppose brand reputation could have a value. It could also lead to companies cycling names for cheapness. Imagine say using Toyota-2022 as the offical name for Toyota.

The notion sounds a bit silly on the surface, but good enough at least for serious classroom discussions and evaluation.

Perhaps a land value tax only for dictionary words that relate to the field of use. If Toyota builds a brand reputation, then they should be able to hold on to that brand value without being taxed on it.

Good point! Someone should invent a more general term though; at first I was wondering what taxing Facebook's land would do.

Perhaps "self-appraisal tax"?

One general term, though it's kind of unsatisfying, is "economic land," and it can refer to things like electromagnetic spectrum too. Any finite resource that that is a factor of production and can not be expanded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(economics)

For namespaces, there is extra value for particular names that come not from any work the owner of the name performed, but rather that comes from the productive activity of others. If I squat "olives.com" in 1994 and wait for the web to get big, and then sell the domain in 2000 to a hottest new direct to consumer olive startup, then any profit from that should really be taxed away. All that "value" came from the work of others that made the web into a valuable place to own some "land."

Maybe "inelastic resource tax" or "squatting tax"?

I'm pretty sure you're wildly wrong about this. Comparing metaverse to virtualboy is a big mistake. Metaverse is not vision over substance. Substance is already there and driving technology to a more refined vision.

We’re already spending significant parts of our days working, playing, exploring and communicating digitally. Dating is online. Commerce has moved online. Art and creators are online. Entertainment is online. Exercise is an AR experience. Connecting with IRL and new virtual-only friends is online. What is left? Food, sleep, sex, and odors? Important things, but a relatively small portion of what we do during our awake hours.

The substance part of the metaverse is already here and proven. We are in a period of refinement which includes technological advancements in the ways we experience it. More compact wearables (e.g. AR/VR headsets), 3D audio, High res displays and better visuals/graphics and most importantly, bridging these different types of experiences in some way, which is a software problem. These are the areas in which tech is trying to gain control and offer the cohesive experience.

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast episode with Bill Gurley (second life creator): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/invest-like-the-best-w...

Everything in your second paragraph is right, and the internet is amazing. I also think VR goggles are cool, have a place in providing relatively short term immersive experiences (though not replacing 16 hours of screen time for some people) and am excited to see where the tech goes.

The reason I use quotes is because Zuck has stolen a word to represent his vision of a world people are already incrementally building for themselves, outside his control. His vision, where his Meta company is central to all this stuff, acts as identity provider and general enabler, and a market -- where Meta is central to even the concept of a metaverse, is shit.

Claiming the name as a brand is a scummy move. It's absolutely dripping with greed, hubris and cynicism. They created this problem, where it's difficult to promote or criticize the general idea of the metaverse and the Meta company version independently. It's the latter that I am confident will be a Black Mirror style horror story if come to fruition, and am urging people not to promote. Any major effort by a big tech company to wrangle the frontier into their walled garden is bad news, but Facebook's past behavior says they'd be especially bad.

There are other words. The Grid or Cyberspace.

His point is that Facebooks new take on AOL isn't going to be that future, not that that future isn't coming.

We already have a metaverse: it's called "reading books".

That's a wholesome idea and nothing more.

Zuckerberg has proven extremely effective at predicting future trends. Look at Instagram and Whatsapp, perfectly timed investments.

Zuck has taken long term bets on the metaverse starting with Occulus and now seemingly betting the whole company on it. He could very well be wrong but there are a lot of very smart people at Facebook and on their board I have to think they did some very intensive validation before doing so.

It could all go up in flames but I think they are going to take a very real run at it backed by billions and billions of dollars.

Don't get me wrong I very much dislike Facebook and the oxygen it provides to extreme and uninformed groups but to think that Zuckerberg is an idiot taking a stab in the dark with the fortunes of a publicly traded FAANG company is not a serious take.

"In Facebooks case, they should really try their hand at making a 2D world that doesn't lead people to want to die before they try to expand on the whole reality thing." No arguments from me, there is a ton of moderation that needs to be added to Facebook.

I think Zuck has a fantastic understanding of systems and where they're headed...and a negative understanding of human motivation and emotion (outside of their quantified metrics). That's why he's smart enough to understand that FB as a platform has a limited lifespan and to get WA and Insta under his belt when they threatened him, and to know that he needs to come up with something else if he wants to continue to accrue wealth and influence. But at the same time, I think his Achilles' Heel is people acting like the irrational apes we are: If you push someone to hate you enough, they will absolutely cut off their nose to spite you, and this works at the cultural level as well. FB as a brand is culturally 'out' now.

Or, as a kid who played Civ online at the same time he did, I'd describe him as somebody who could win every game of Civ through bug exploits and memorizing the mechanics, but is such a dick about it nobody wants to play with him again and that confuses him.

"If you build it, they will come." Only if they don't hate you, and Zuck isn't doing well in the court of public opinion.

So Zuckerberg was like playing the ATL Falcons with Michael Vick and their 4-6 formation on Madden online? Cool thought.

The difference is Instagram and WhatsApp were products that had real product value before Zuck acquired them.

Zuck has to build a v1 product from scratch with the Metaverse. When's the last time FB has truly built a revolutionary v1 product? It's not really in their DNA anymore. I'm not saying they can't do it, but I wouldn't point to IG and WhatsApp as examples of why Zuck can pull it off.

Facebook Chat is basically a messaging business on its own. Given that Google has tried and failed to get into this space COUNTLESS times over the years, I'd call that a pretty solid new product offering from them.

Facebook has also innovated significantly in adtech afaik

Portal is pretty nifty to chat with families over WhatsApp.

I always say that if you're interested in the Metaverse, I have many acres of land in Second Life for sale, and as many Linden Dollars as you'd like.

This whole Metaverse thing reminds me of when IBM purchased 12 islands and opened a virtual office in Second Life. Of course, as was tradition at the time, someone inevitably showed up with a flying gentlemen's sausage. Eventually IBM decided the whole thing was too costly and abandoned the project.

The lesson here is that when IBM gets involved, that's probably the top.

There's a difference in Second Life and the whole "metaverse" just as there is a difference between the time and tech then and now.

Not every tech is going to be successful at every time. The same solution can fail once and succeed some other time when there's a change in the market and/or the underlying technology.

There's a much larger number of human beings on the internet now. And they are not just on the internet, but they actively use it for a large amount of time. That's the chance in market right now and what will drive the adoption of metaverse soon.

The thing that we should focus on right now is whether we want a metaverse owned by Facebook or something that is defined by open protocols.

Oh wow. Someone already did this! How have I not heard about this yet?

> Look at Instagram and Whatsapp, perfectly timed investments.

What do you mean perfectly timed? If you mean that those platforms shot up in usage/revenue/whatever-metric after their purchase, couldn't that be heavily influenced by the purchase? Neither of those were some small little platform with a groundbreaking new feature before that. Everyone I knew (in highschool at the time) had gotten sick of their parents all joining Facebook and making it uncool, so they moved to Instagram before the purchase.

All that Zuck did was notice the platform all the kids are migrating to and bought it to keep those users. It isn't exactly "predicting future trends." They tried to do it again when everyone's parents joined Instagram so the kids moved to Snapchat, but thankfully that deal didn't go through

"All that Zuck did was notice the platform all the kids are migrating to and bought it to keep those users. It isn't exactly "predicting future trends." They tried to do it again when everyone's parents joined Instagram so the kids moved to Snapchat, but thankfully that deal didn't go through"

I would argue this is exactly what predicting future trends is. See which way the tide is going and make the necessary investments to ride it.

...which everybody does. There is nothing special about that particular smart person's ability to predict the future. Appeals to authority based on selectively chosen past performance... let's see how this ages 10 years from now.

> I would argue this is exactly what predicting future trends is.

It's recognizing current and predicting extremely short-term future trends that lots of other people recognized but didn't have the funds to do exploit in the same way.

Metaverse would be something very different.

I think there's a pretty big difference between buying a rapidly-growing platform and... whatever the hell was shown off in that vaporware announcement video

Buying companies that already have millions of users is different from trying to build a new thing yourself. Many. Of their internally built services and products have failed. Remember the android launcher?

Very much so, but while that is true, one shouldn't overlook the base fact that they did build Facebook themselves which was a very new thing and is now one of the largest tech companies in the world. I'm sure there will be hundreds of small bets and failures with the metaverse concept but I do think that eventually its going to happen.

As far as I'm concerned they're recreating Club Penguin.

Hot take but I think you are incredibly wrong. Remember that Today show clip from the 90's where they laugh off this new Internet thing? That's you. Ignorance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJku_CSyNg

I used to think this but Ben Thompson changed my mind.

This meta verse thing really could be the way we work remotely soon. It works as a working space. It works for companies, it could create good work environments, and companies can afford expensive hardware to get people to work more effecively.

Think of the metaverse as a more advanced slack+zoom, not as a Minecraft/Roblox alternative.

Chat apps work just fine. I already feel tired, just thinking about having to wear VR gear all day while I work.

If we ever get to that point the VR gear would need to be effortless.

No, just mandatory.

Place Obligatory "Matrix" comment here.

Devs still have control over where they work.

Current VR gear? Maybe. Future VR gear, especially with big tech money in it? Maybe not so much.

Meanwhile, pairing a modern phone with the Bluetooth receiver in a rental car is still somehow a frustrating adventure more than half the time...

Physical cables my friend. Cables.

Joking aside, I've stopped using bluetooth in any vehicle that is not mine (actually using a rental this moment since my car is being worked on right now). Pretty much all rental cars have been built in the past 3 years, and for the most part they all have a USB for Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. So much easier to just use a cable and not hope the wireless connection stays working.

Though the cable itself isn't reliable sometimes and will disconnect itself/pause audio upon reconnection. Maybe good ol' FM and CDs are the way to go.

doesn't android auto also depend on BT? not clear to me why, but I believe it has to be on.

in any case, I find Android auto just trades one set of issues for another. voice control is kinda iffy for all but the most unambiguous commands. I also experience deadlocks at least once a week that require restarting the head unit, phone, or both. I've had this issue with two different phones in two different cars. not sure what the root cause is, but it is really distracting when navigation freezes halfway through a trip through an unfamiliar area.

I cannot speak on Android Auto specifically and what the requirements are currently (though I intend on migrating to an Android device in the near future) my '22 Subaru only allows Android Auto or Apple CarPlay to work via the cable, as you can link the phone over Bluetooth to the 'generic phone' controls, but not the phone-specific-display controls.

Though I haven't had issues in regards to the headunit failing just yet - I've had the phone lock up a few times, but I think that is in part due to the age of my iPhone (6s) and the lack of processing power/ram.

In the future you won't wear VR, VR will wear you.

Maybe you’re not the target audience.

I have a project currently deploying a bunch Microsoft Teams Rooms at a client. It tries to create a similar experience in a physical space. People are confused as hell by it — it doesn’t work the way they’re used to / expecting, so they give up within a few minutes and just connect an HDMI cable to the main screen.

We weren’t even going to have HDMI as a fallback, but the executives demanded it because they weren't willing to spend 5 minutes every meeting dealing with the tech when the problem is that it didn’t work the way they wanted it to.

I cannot imagine my users in-office all donning headsets when many attendees in a meeting are just there to listen while working on other things. I personally like to take those kinds of “listening in” calls while doing work around the house. I’m not sticking my face in a VR headset for that.

I'm with you - the "listening in" calls are where it's at.

If we get to a point where we're "forced" to don headsets for meetings, it can't be long before dummy heads with realistic eyes (to fool the inevitable eye-tracking/iris scanning "presence" check) appear on the market.

A bit like those mouse jigglers they're sell to prevent your status moving to "away"

This sounds like my world and yes Execs can't seem to reconcile that their personal laptop cannot control a camera linked to an android app on the other side of the room. That's not what they asked for initially, they asked for the one-touch join the meeting crap that the salesman sold them on. Come hell or high water though once they get in the room they want their personal laptop to drive the meeting.

It is infuriating.

Yeah the tech is wonderful when there’s a good facilitator who knows how to use it effectively, but the problem is most meeting facilitators are not very good and have their own personal style that might not match up with any given product. Getting to the outcome of the meeting is far more important than using some fancy software, and for 90% of meetings you can get there with Zoom or Teams on a laptop.

What company in their right mind would allow a company with Facebook’s privacy record to have access to all of their most important IP? You would have to be insane.

Virtual spaces for work already exist and (almost) nobody uses them, so I don't know what a different name for the same thing is expected to accomplish.

Nobody uses them because they are clunky and unnatural. The leap of faith is that soon the technology will make these things seamless and natural. Only then will virtual spaces take off in a meaningful way.

Here's a wild idea, meet in person.

What if they're in different cities?

There's plenty of companies that are distributed across countries. On my team I have teammates in Macedonia, Costa Rica, USA, and Germany. Even without Covid restrictions, that's going to be expensive and time consuming for us to meet in person.

Then you know it will be worthwhile

Linux was built using a distributed team without the metaverse. It seems like we’re doing just fine?

Email is fine, thanks.

> Think of the metaverse as a more advanced slack+zoom

What do you think is missing from today's slack+zoom (or discord +jitsi/google meet, or whatever) combo that would make you more productive?

Idling. The single most important thing I’ve lost since the pandemic started is the capability to overhear conversations.

I can no longer pick up on junior team members talking themselves into trouble and nip it in the bud, I only get exposed to that trouble by the time they’ve invested enough time into it that it becomes a much harder discussion.

When I go grab a cup of coffee I no longer overhear other teams talking about their projects, and ask them if they mind me sitting in to learn more about what they’re doing.

A lot of the organic social interactions that serve as a medium for knowledge diffusion are just gone.

> I can no longer pick up on junior team members talking themselves into trouble and nip it in the bud, I only get exposed to that trouble by the time they’ve invested enough time into it that it becomes a much harder discussion.

Perhaps the environment isn’t right for them to just ask for help?

> When I go grab a cup of coffee I no longer overhear other teams talking about their projects, and ask them if they mind me sitting in to learn more about what they’re doing.

Demo days?

> A lot of the organic social interactions that serve as a medium for knowledge diffusion are just gone.

Happy hours?

Have you joined any company happy hours with 6+ attendees?

It inevitably turns into an awkward mess. Sure you can use breakout rooms but the social happy hour via zoom/slack is not a solved problem.

Yesterday at my work they had a Christmas event where normally they hire a speaker to come to (normally in person, but now on a Teams call), and this year they brought in a lady who's a comedian and minor Canadian celebrity.

She got through the first 25 minutes or so of her routine (which was incredibly awkward -- standup does not work without a crowd, and it's just you telling jokes to your own empty living room) and eventually at one point her audio got stuck as she was saying the word "and" and it literally just kept looping her saying "and and and and and" over and over. They tried to troubleshoot it for about 10 minutes. Her video was still working, but every time they enabled her audio again it was just the looping "and and and and." I felt kinda bad for her. The whole thing felt like a plastic recreation of a real experience, and the technical difficulties at the end were emblematic of it all.

> standup does not work without a crowd

There's a Zoom comedy show my partner has been attending for 1.5 years, and she bawls every week. So, it's possible for a show to work out.

Maybe she was self-aware of the situation as well and decided to turn it into material for next joke

Since there is a sub-set of people that don't even join company happy hours in person, that feature alone could not be sufficient so.

I would change careers if I had to work in VR. I don’t like people and wfh is a dream. I’ve been doing it for 10 years and won’t ever go back.

2010 - what do you think is missing from your work skype group chats that would make you more productive?

Nothing.

Well, IRC worked well enough as a chat app back the day as well. Besides large group chats, I didn't miss any features compared to Teams. And let's be honest, those group chats aren't that productive most of the time.

Now imagine Zuck being in charge. How could it not be a toxic wasteland?

John on Accidental Tech Podcast (http://atp.fm) has articulated some pretty solid criticisms.

Facebook has historically sucked at hardware. Why would that change?

Whereas other parasocial hosts attempt to protect their users, like MMOPRGs mitigating griefing and cheating, Facebook and Twitter amplify and profit from toxicity.

Etc.

That is a common social media criticism, "amplify and profit from toxicity". I find the charge vaucous for several reasons.

1. "Give what the numbers say you want." or "Maximize profit * area of instance." are what they actually want. Even if it leads to emergent antisocial behavior it is set by results instead of a goal in itself. 2. The charge itself could be applied to any form of media, and yet there is a blatant double standard. If one accused three letter network of it you would get a response of "well duh"! 3. The implicit idea that negativity is a bad thing is outright dangerous, yet clearly promoted by the accusatory tone. Publishing government misconduct also promotes negativity and a publication may profit from it. So does speaking out against injustice. Crude and callous as it may sound, maybe some outright deserve the negativity.

> 2. The charge itself could be applied to any form of media

Correct. Zuck, Dorsey, and PageBrin just stole the old guard's lunch money. Just like broadcast toppled print, papyrus displaced clay cuniform.

It's an old story. The power elite always seize control of popular communications. Technological progress begets a changing of the guard.

> and yet there is a blatant double standard

By whom?

There is always a resentful cohort moaning about "kids these days".

There is always some cranks (like me) performatively rejecting the whole system. Yesterday's Kill Your Television is today's Delete Facebook.

While the masses keep plodding along, amusing themselves as able, self medicating, seeking some kind of respite from the never ending sting of the human condition. Moo.

What you describe is working in VR. But please stop conflating VR with metaverse. Although, I reckon, they will soon be synonyms if we continue like this.

>This meta verse thing really could be the way we work remotely soon.

Oh please god kill me now.

For real. The last thing I want is to get disciplined or fired because the eye scanners in my work helmet told my boss that I looked at non-work related items for 3.7% of my work day and they only allow for 2.9% of the work day not visually engaged with my screen.

> Think of the metaverse as a more advanced slack+zoom, not as a Minecraft/Roblox alternative.

The next question is why? Followed by the heath issues problems. You’re supposed to look away from a screen every 10 mins for 10 seconds. How can I do that with the screen strapped to my face? And why we’re here, why would I go to my private space inside the metaverse to get away from people? Why not take the damn headset off? The whole idea is forced.

Magic Leap keeps getting GIANT amounts of funding despite not having dropped anything that people can buy (I think they took a DOWN round of $500M this year.)

Apple is investing significant amounts of capital on ARkit and AI/ML optimizations at the die level. Google has been dabbling in this space for years and years.

Second Life, the non-AR version of the metaverse, was hugely popular back in the day despite the tech at the time (i.e. having to carve time to use it on your computer). Pokemon GO (a Google bet) is still wildly popular.

With Facebook doubling-down in this space, yes, I am going to take this very seriously.

AR != VR

AR has a very clear and useful future. Metaverse is a gimmick to get people to work and live in a world where facebook, err Meta, can nickel and dime everything.

Let’s be clear here, the metaverse is useful for separating idiots from their money (see how much people are spending on fake land atm)

Hot take. You're comparing a video game company in the 90's vision and ability to deliver that vision to one of the largest companies in the world ability to deliver?

While you may not want the Metaverse, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "If it succeeds at all, it will be a testament to societies ability to bend to the whims of rich idiots.", plenty of people are happy to try new things. Facebook, the social network, is a estimate to massive amounts of people willing to get on board with an idea that is new, at least to them.

Frankly, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Seems more like because you don’t like Metaverse you don’t want it taken seriously. But it will be serious business.

> they should really try their hand at making a 2D world that doesn't lead people to want to die

The problem is, the "idiot's metrics", that is the engagement time as the ultimate metric of financial success, clearly show that negative content that is bad for your well-being favors them. They literally earn money from your suffering. How could you expect them to give up on that?

Why is every single one of your posts defending cryptocurrency or k8s?

> Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse

Why do people keep talking about the metaverse like it already exists and is a huge part of our future?

It's vaporware right now.

Are we all so susceptible to marketing that we've just accepted that if Meta is going all-in on a thing it must be both real and a guaranteed win?

Whenever I hear the word metaverse. I just replace it with the word "internet".

Its nothing more than a way for a few companies to monetize a few extra things and become gate keepers to things that have neither on the internet.

The metaverse is basically what the internet would be if it was invented today

> Whenever I hear the word metaverse. I just replace it with the word "internet".

Hey, you gotta give it more credit than that

It's the internet but you'll never be able to use an adblocker!

I think it's time to update the "cloud to butt" plugins...

"With the metaverse, we're no longer restricted by our physical location, but we can all live in the butt."

- Mark Zuckerberg

What is this a reference to?

Back when cloud was the big new buzzword several browser extensions/bookmarklets were created to replace occurrences of "cloud" with "butt".

1_player's comment should have replaced both occurrences of metaverse with butt though.

https://github.com/DaveRandom/cloud-to-butt-mozilla

> Whenever I hear the word metaverse. I just replace it with the word "internet".

Does there happen to be a browser extension to automate this?

Yeah i do this as well. 100%.

I wish facebook had never existed we wouldn't have to deal with this garbage. I'd be curious what would have filled the gap.

It's a hip marketing term that caught on like Hyperloop did, suddenly every time public transit was mentioned, so was Hyperloop.

But don't be fooled. It's Facebook. Don't be fooled by its rename either, it's still Facebook.

1000% this. "Metaverse" is just fancy re-branding of "Facebook but with VR". They want you to buy an Oculus and go to their internet property when and if people start interacting with the internet via VR, just like you buy a phone and go to their internet property. But it's just Facebook. It's going to be an app you run (or site you visit) on whatever hardware you happen to use to connect.

Meta has made a full announcement of vaporware, but the metaverse is specifically not Meta's property, nor do they get to define what the metaverse is/will become.

In that sense, I agree with you we should ignore the marketing, and I also think we should talk about the metaverse as we talk about the web, not as some rigid concept, but more a vague idea of a thing in VR.

> Metaverse as we talk about the web, not as some rigid concept, but more a vague idea of a thing in VR.

Ah I see so it's like a space, but on the web. Like some sort of a cyber...

Anyone talking about this "metaverse" like it is anything other than the normal internet we already have (which is equally amazing, btw) would have to have either created or fallen for some sort of marketing material.

Cyberverse! Where you go to ... cyber. Welp, that had a, uh, certain connotation back in the early 2000s.

I'm sure the metaverse will be 90% ERP channels within a month.

ERP as in Enterprise Resource Planning?

My bet is that it becomes like what Clubhouse is now: a home for all kinds of whackjobs, hustle culture bros, "become wealthy" gurus and recruitment channels for MLMs and political extremists.

I believe you were being facetious, but just in case...

ERP can also mean Erotic Role Playing.

There will not be "a metaverse" or "the metaverse"

They may be some competing metaverses, I doubt one will win out (I kind of doubt any will do well)

my thought exactly. We've had virtual worlds and communities as long as we've had the internet, and the idea of carrying "stuff" from one to the other never worked out.

So my bet is that there will never be The Metaverse just like there never was The Forum, The MMORPG, The MUD.

We may still have useful/fun stuff in specific VR worlds, of course.

But interestingly there is The Internet. But perhaps because that exists, there's no need for the interconnectedness promised by the other things because the internet already delivers it. Or perhaps the future holds multiple internets (especially with political regions doing their best to balkanize the legality of various uses of the internet)?

There was an attempt to connect MUDs together using a protocol called InterMUD, but it never really caught on.

It would be hilarious if this became the next "dropbox" comment. I'm placing my stake here just in case! :)

Interestingly we don't yet have a player coming it with a "we made it cheap and simple" solution.

Even Meta's Quest hardware is still not at that point, and the ecosystem is pretty small. I feel like we're not even at the "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad." stage yet.

Good point. There have been attempts by PC manufacturers to make VR headsets. We need a Windows like OS to make this possible I suppose.

Why wouldn't one win out? There were multiple competing "internets" and now there is the one.

There are some people that consider various aspects of the Oculus and Vive ecosystems to be the metaverse. Some people think The Sandbox and Decentrland are metaverses. There are others, and they're all here now. So, I guess it's a matter of opinion whether you believe any of these can be considered a metaverse.

It does exist in the form of Roblox :)

Roblox could be considered a metaverse, sure[0], but the metaverse implies a ubiquitousness that no offering so far has achieved.

[0] And, honestly, I see Meta's play here as the Google Plus to Roblox's Facebook.

> ubiquitousness that no offering so far has achieved.

The internet does

Since we’re talking about Reddit, my take is that Roblox is Digg and Rec Room (which is VR-native and has much better tech even though it currently has lower user numbers) will end up being the “Reddit” of the space.

You may be right. I hated how ugly and dorky Reddit was compared to digg, but then digg self destructed and now I’m on Reddit. Recroom is like that, it’s annoying it has a terrible interface, it is a giant pain to get a group together to play, the audio is janky to get working right, and then when you finally get to your game it’s almost impossible to play on the same team.

Then after every match I have to spend time opening up some kind of gift that I have no use for. All the while 13 year old kids are being annoying yelling and whining. It’s a pretty rough experience right now.

I suggest giving the oculus rift 2 a try. It is the farthest thing from vaporware.

Besides most people use a loose definition of metaverse that includes things like gaming (Minecraft, roblox), social media, our phones, etc. which are all multi-billion dollar industries already.

And there's the "genius" of their rebrand. By the loose definition the metaverse already exists, so Facebook (a company focused on building software that helps connect people via the Internet) rebranded to Meta (a company focused on building software that helps connect people via... gaming, social media, phones, and... the Internet? -- all of which they were already doing). If what you're setting out to build already exists, you can't fail.

But Mark Zuckerberg doesn't use the loose definition, as I mentioned in another comment. He talks about quite a clear vision of a world in which VR/AR technologies have permeated society and are part of everyone's everyday lives. That vision doesn't exist yet, it's a long way from being realized, and yet people (like the commenter I originally responded to) keep referencing it as if it already exists, is successful, and important. And it's none of those three things yet.

metaverse is whatever anyone wants it to be.

You are being too literal.

Meta

Verse

Self referential artistic expression

Artistic abstraction of self; ones ideation, concepts; is not limited to Zoom with Mario64 heads.

Extracting the idea of a web of documents into web 1…

Any concept can be a metaverse. The creator outputs an abstraction arising within self.

Zuckerberg has a specific thing to sell. Don’t go coming up with your own metaverse to play in.

> Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.

> The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world. It’s the next evolution in a long line of social technologies, and it’s ushering in a new chapter for our company.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/facebook-company-is-now-me...

> In the next decade, he thinks most people will be spending time in a fully immersive, 3D version of the internet that spans not just Meta’s hardware such as the Quest, but devices made by others. He’s pushing his teams to build technology that could one day let you show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar, or appear as a hologram of yourself in the real-world living room of your friend who lives across the planet.

https://www.theverge.com/22749919/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-m...

You can play semantics if you want. Meta, the company, have announced that they are building a thing. That thing is what I am talking about. It is vaporware right now. It it not a guaranteed win.

Exactly /s

I have 1 Friend that has var goggles, and he does not like the chat funktion it just seems like its dead in the water unless var Prices come down hard..

Quest is under $300 and is fantastic for what you get and is completely self-contained and portable.

More importantly, Meta and Apple are both launching AR glasses next near (or maybe Q1 2023) and at that point AR will start to have its “iphone” moment where it starts our nice then suddenly everyone has one.

Yeah if you like ads and like all your movement being data mined. It also has the worst FoV of any headset on the market, which basically equals the amount of immersion you get out of it. You're better off with a smartphone cardboard thing or saving up for a real headset.

Personally I'm waiting for the next gen ones, the current ones are all still too terrible in price to performance.

Genuinely curious...are you old enough to remember Digg and what happened to it?

I don't mean that to be patronizing...but I remember being on Digg and Reddit being a weird alternative. And after a series of huge mistakes, almost overnight Reddit was flooded with users and Digg relegated to nothing.

It really opened my eyes to how quickly an empire built only on its users can disappear.

I’ve done posts before. As have others. The scope, popularity, and longevity of the fallen past top sites like Friendster, MySpace, Digg, Slashdot, Altavista, Excite. Or web builders like Geocities, Angelfire. Other social networks like Bebo, Hi5. Other messaging apps like Viber. Or older ones like AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ.

Finally people stopped bringing up the old messengers. They had such tiny userbases. The comparisons don’t make sense.

As do all other older sites pale in comparison to absolute mammoths like Reddit now. Digg was so small compared to Reddit. It lasted for such a short period of time. People have finally stopped bringing up MySpace when touting Facebook/Instagram’s fall. MySpace peaked for at most two years 2005-2006. Before being a ghost land before the end of 2008. MySpace’s peak user base was peanuts. It also likely wasn’t very accurate in how they were able to report things. Their revenue and cash flow even smaller. The internet is broader with mobile and desktop usage. Cellular data and wifi. Global. Billions more users.

Comparing Digg to Reddit just doesn’t work. Reddit isn’t the site it was before 2010. During the digg exodus. The few years after that. And to nowadays.

———————- Edit: for some actual numbers. Copy pasting from my other comment:

Reddit gains more users than all of Digg had at its peak at least twice a year or so. If it’s growing at 20% year over year

Digg peaked at 30M monthly users. A few social network site numbers from a year ago[0]: “Reddit revealed that it now has 52 million daily users, and the number appears to be growing quickly. Reddit told The Wall Street Journal that daily usage grew 44 percent year over year for October” “Twitter has 187 million daily users, Snap has 249 million, and Facebook has 1.82 billion” These are daily. Not monthly like Digg. For monthly, Reddit is nearing 500M.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21754984/reddit-dau-daily...

But should those numbers be normalized for total numbers of internet users?

I'm honestly not sure but I think there's an argument for it. The internet was a smaller place as a whole before Digg's collapse. They can't have had users that didn't exist.

On the other hand, maybe turnover can be more rapid when a domain such as the internet itself is rapidly developing.

Just seems to me there's broader factors to consider than Digg per se or reddit per se.

My best argument to this that I would gladly be proven wrong so I don’t look silly being wrong. Is there any example in the past ~7 years of any major cultural use content sites that had precedence like Digg losing influence the way Digg and others did?

The only examples that I can think of are things like Yahoo Answers, Quora, Tumblr. Leaving Tumblr aside just to see if there’s any other examples, are there? We could expand it to 10 years possibly? I want to stick to the modern smartphone era.

I list many sites that rose and fell as well as apps like IM apps. How many of them had peaks or consistent growth for 10 years?

My thesis is to not look for people’s opinion on changes. Look at the actual numbers. Web giants once they get established in this modern era. Rarely get displaced like Digg did.

> On the other hand, maybe turnover can be more rapid when a domain such as the internet itself is rapidly developing.

Yes whether this is it or not as the reason is what I am saying based on what is happening

> Just seems to me there's broader factors to consider than Digg per se or reddit per se.

Yeah I didn’t intend to say I knew all the reasons why. Just that modern web giants can’t be compared to the web giants of the earlier web.

I agree there's few if any examples of more recent entities. I also am pretty unfamiliar with actual numbers of active users per se, though. Tumblr may be the closest, maybe Quora although I'm not sure even Quora compares to Reddit. Maybe Snapchat? Flickr? Probably not; I'm not sure about those for several reasons.

I think there might be some kind of memory bias in the sense that we're less likely to remember things that have receded into the background or even disappeared but I agree that as more users come on board because of network effects it's harder to let go of a service or to replace what it has to offer.

I think you're missing something important in this analysis: Awareness of the cycle and outside interference.

I'm one of the first people to bail when a platform or service becomes unusable and a new one becomes viable. I have zero loyalty: I started out in Usenet servers and with individual webpages and moved through to blogs/forums, then to Myspace and LiveJournal, and so on. (Including the Digg to Reddit migration).

This option is less available to me now because most new platforms are either bought out (Instagram) or require such high costs due to having to support multimedia bandwidth that there's nowhere for us to go. I'm not happy with the current platform options and I monitor them for meta-discussion fairly frequently and there is a portion of the Reddit and Twitter userbase that is ready to move IF something suitable comes along.

However, my desire for a new platform is directly at odds with the interests of the current companies and, unlike in the Myspace era, Zuck + the people running Reddit are aware of platform death and use their resources to keep their platforms 'alive' as long as they can. This is also why we see things like Instagram Reels and RPAN: The execs of social media companies know about platform death and manage for it. Think of Google's strategizing for the future versus Yahoo's: It's not that platform death can't happen, it's that they've been the ones sliding in that dagger so they want to defend against it.

It's like saying that calvary are irrelevant because somebody came up with anti-calvary tactics and strategies.

We're in this weird situation where those of us who like to explore new social frontiers and build new communities are only being given places to do so that either a.) Have strict social requirements already built in and that just kills our drive to see what happens if we put humans HERE and have them interact like THIS or b.) Are controlled by corporations who want to use that for their own benefit, and I'm NOT teaching, encouraging, or leading any more people to things I think will hurt or exploit them.

It's weird.

I believe you and some other HNers are exceptions to the vast norms of how people operate.

I didn’t include the bit in my other comment where Discord and Reddit do ban major communities. So portions of those userbases are forced to at least partially leave. We have seen what that has done to both platforms. Nothing.

Yes platform death can still happen of course. There are many reasons they haven’t happened. Many reasons they did in the Digg days. Not all of the platforms have done equivalent “anti-cavalry” tactics the way some have. Still there is at most one example of a platform death in the past decade. Versus so many before that.

My entire point was to not use the platform deaths of the 00s as a reasonable direct retort to the shakiness of current web giant platforms. Especially when it includes things like wondering if others remember internet history. As if people who remember Digg’s fall are wise to something.

—

Totally agree with your general vibe, sentiment, and your final paragraph.

> I believe you and some other HNers are exceptions to the vast norms of how people operate.

Absolutely, but in the same way that moderators and admins are also outside the norm but still have a substantial impact on how/if communities grow and develop (provided a community has them). Communities in general rely on a certain percentage of people in them doing community-maintenance work, and at least some of it needs to be done due to love of the community. We're weird, but we're also the people who ran around showing a bunch of people Google in 1998, or who were encouraging people to switch from MySpace to Facebook in the 00s. We're the ones who articulate to the normal people why they should switch platforms, where they should go, and why the new place will solve the problems. Building a platform without us is difficult, and so is maintaining one if you're relying on community spaces.

I definitely think you're right that the situation is more complex than it was, but I think you're overselling the differences. Things are bigger so they take longer now, but that's the main difference. That and the financial interests involved; if anything is constraining platform death I would say it's that platform death costs MONEY now.

> My entire point was to not use the platform deaths of the 00s as a reasonable direct retort to the shakiness of current web giant platforms. Especially when it includes things like wondering if others remember internet history. As if people who remember Digg’s fall are wise to something.

Fair enough. I tend to err on the other side because so much of the Web is built to strip information of context and I adore digital history; there are so many things discussed where anything more than 5 years ago might as well have not happened. Still, there can definitely be an undertone of 'stfu noob' to stuff sometimes that is offputting.

In my opinion reddit banning toxic communities has helped cement their dominance. I've tried to jump ship to sites like Voat early on in their life cycle, but whenever reddit banned racist / toxic communities, the people from those communities would jump ship to the most viable alternative. This caused the new site to take on the character of the banned communities. Voat got to the point where nearly every thread had someone lobbing derogatory terms at jews / black people.

I think if a new site is to succeed, it needs to have a heavy hand with moderation.

It has, but I think that's on accident on Reddit's part. So far, pretty much everywhere they've banned has been out of the Overton Window enough that the results are what you see. Voat, Saidit, etc. There has been one semi-successful small alternative in Ovarit (in that it's a stable community that slowly gains people), but the radfems set up an invite system + a lot of their beliefs are less 'crazy' + their ideology encourages them to discuss 'normie' things with each other.

There is one other way a new site could succeed, I think: A Reddit competitor with decent search and archive abilities, better mobile/app UX, and (here's the killer) a complete ban on political discussion and brand accounts. Set up a place for people to have groups for hobbies without having to prove their vaxx status (or lack thereof) or whether they like trans people enough. People (regardless of their political persuasion) need breaks, rest, hobby, and connection.

Not sure why Viber is on your list of fallen messaging apps. In the past few years I've seen more and more "X has joined Viber. Say hi!" notifications about my contacts (based in the US, which if anything makes me think it's growing).

My bad!

(Disclaimer: I used to work at Reddit but left in 2018)

While I think you're absolutely right, I think Digg made a number of other missteps with the Digg v4 launch that Reddit did not make. In particular, they shut down the old Digg site to reuse the servers for the new one, a mistake that Reddit was particularly careful not to make.

Digg was also already on the way down before their failed launch, and before the exodus to Reddit - a condition that doesn't apply to Reddit today. People have been making Digg comparisons about Reddit before I worked there, and now long after I've left. I don't think the 2 are comparable.

Will Larson writes about it here: https://lethain.com/digg-v4/

Reddit is on the way down. They may be gaining users, but the platform is a lot less interesting. The quality of content is way down, the spam and clickbait way up, and censorship by dictatorial moderators is out of control. Its a big echo chamber now.

You are seeing a huge demand for more free speech platforms. Youtube is outofcontrol, Google is editing search, twitter is peering over the abyss now that Jack is gone and Reddit is right along them. It may take a while, but in a few years they are going to face steep competition. It may very well be an open source decentralized project like Mastodon.

Reddit was always a feudal system, from the moment they introduced subreddits. Simply being the first to land-grab a name makes you the king. Your chosen loyalists become moderators, and the serfs farm content for you.

I don’t particularly buy this idea since Mastodon has already existed for several years - and in that time, all the major social media players have only increased their market share.

As far as free speech platforms go you have things like Gab, Voat, etc which prioritize free speech in name. While that may be commendable as a value, the core audience they attract in the beginning is inevitably too extreme for the platform to go mainstream.

By the time Reddit replaced Digg, Digg was already losing users routinely. I don’t think any of the current social media players are in that position just yet.

> It really opened my eyes to how quickly an empire built only on its users can disappear.

Reminds me of the Freenode IRC network which pretty much stopped existing[1][2] overnight.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_...

[2] https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c164679...

Similar to my response to the OP, the comparisons don’t work because IRC as a whole, no less one network, are not empires. Reddit did a god awful redesign. Then piled on forcing their official mobile app usage by limiting the site more and more. Unlike the small geeky IRC world, none of this did anything to curb Reddit popularity. While it’s entirely possibly an equivalent move in IRC or some other niche geeky place would have an exodus or major consequences.

Reddit has banned a number of subreddits too. With hundreds of thousands of active members. None of this curbs its popularity. And not everything they ban is problematic like inappropriate non consensual sexual posts or aggressive bigotry.

Reddit gains more users than all of Digg had at its peak at least twice a year or so. If it’s growing at 20% year over year

Digg peaked at 30M monthly users.

A few social network site numbers from a year ago[0]:

“Reddit revealed that it now has 52 million daily users, and the number appears to be growing quickly. Reddit told The Wall Street Journal that daily usage grew 44 percent year over year for October” “Twitter has 187 million daily users, Snap has 249 million, and Facebook has 1.82 billion”

These are daily. Not monthly like Digg. For monthly, Reddit is nearing 500M.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21754984/reddit-dau-daily...

It's the early adopters that move, not the masses that eventually follow a few years later. It's a small community that shapes crowds.

My best argument to this that I would gladly be proven wrong so I don’t look silly being wrong. Is there any example in the past ~7 years, even ~10 years of any major cultural user content sites that had precedence like Digg, losing influence the way Digg and other contemporaries did?

The only examples that I can think of is Tumblr.

If there’s so many examples before 10 years ago. And maybe 1 example in recent times. Your point can still stand. However it also doesn’t mean much when the resilience of web giants are totally different between the Digg Web time and after that

Yeah I think also that we underestimate these massive sites by thinking they have not learned from Digg etc.

the freenode irc network disappeared overnight, but everyone just updated their links to point at libera.chat instead, which has almost all of the same projects, active users, etc.

It was essentially just an infrastructure change, which is the nice thing about open protocols and server implementations. Libera has 40k users and over 1000 foss projects that were on freenode.

the freenode userbase and community is alive and well, just under a new link

I was a Freenode user for a decade, many more IRC networks in the preceding decade, since 1999 or so. I enjoy chatting with my friends and participating in projects realtime on IRC. I left freenode when all the bitcoin/monero related projects moved to Libera. Update your links, drop your nick registrations on the old network, register on the new - keep on trucking.

I'll give one counterpoint:

When did you see anyone on TV mention Digg?

Reddit's become mainstream, it's quoted by serious news outlets, joked around on Last Week Tonight (and other politic joke shows), and I'd say it's as likely to disappear as Facebook. Which is to say, surely but very slowly.

I'm sure I saw a mention once or twice on TechTV and/or G4, but that just supports your point.

They got a huge boost from Stephen Colbert mentioning them

> Reddit is democratizing in a sense

Apart from the bit where all of the main subreddits (and therefore the front page) are controlled by completely unvetted, unpaid moderators, who tend to be Extremely Online People.

I don't understand how Facebook are continuously attacked by politicians for not moderating content well enough when they have towers full of paid moderators, while Reddit continues unaffected.

> Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse

Does anyone actually care about the metaverse? Everyone I know thinks it's some kind of joke. It seems like Silicon Valley nonsense.

Facebook gets attacked because politicians believe it can be used to nudge peoples opinions en mass but in a way that's hard to detect.

Reddit doesn't because everyone can see what's going on. You might not like it, but you can see it.

I'd have agreed with you 10 years ago when the average Redditor was arguably smarter than your typical social media user and each subreddit's alliances were clear. These days I completely disagree and feel Reddit is more dangerous than other forms of social media.

The average Redditor still believes that they're more intelligent and believes that they're seeing balanced information (because how can upvotes and downvotes lie?), while being blind to all of the astroturfing and agendas placed by the people who run subreddits.

Reddit was never and has never been about balanced information, I think the entire purpose of the site was never balanced information it was what was most popular with a particular subs hive mind, 10 years ago we just had different echo chambers.

The thing that changed was that new generations of users started to use the site, younger millennials and gen z. And their echo chambers differ from the previous generation of reddit users echo chambers and are broadly incompatible because echo chambers usually edge to the extremes on both sides.

> Does anyone actually care about the metaverse? Everyone I know thinks it's some kind of joke. It seems like Silicon Valley nonsense.

I care about VR as a medium and I'm worried that another round of hype will drag the whole of VR/XR down with it when it slumps again.

Still. We've been through this cycle before and it's nice to see some more investment. Hopefully it will leave some residual benefit that outweighs the damage caused by the gold rush.

It's worse this time as the metaverse hype has thrown crypto into the mix so it's not just an investor gold rush - it's an crypto one too.

> while Reddit continues unaffected.

Don't give them ideas. Content moderation in this form basically dumped down content to the most digestible level and that is some partisan whack because people are already addicted to being outraged. Most affected are somehow news and political subs as well as national subs. You will find nothing interesting there because you don't learn about the respective cultures, you learn about typical redditors.

Any government interference has without exception been pretty bad in my opinion. You won't find quality representatives that could develop protection for online platforms anymore. Don't know why statecraft has become so much more incompetent.

> Does anyone actually care about the metaverse?

The what?

> Anecdotally, a VERY LARGE percentage of my Google searches end in “site:reddit.com” these days.

Compared to platforms like Discord they have the advantage that their content is actually discoverable by search engines. I hate the push to Discord since that basically makes you invisible. I get that it is convenient, but it has a lot of negative side effects that aren't obvious at first.

Which also one of the reasons I loathe the move from open BB forums to Facebook on the niche/ hobby communities.

That we are repeating the mistake with discord, is very unfortunate.

Reddit really has the possibility of integrating Discord's functionality into the site if they make their chat product less shit.

That would be the best of both worlds in my opinion.

And in addition even if you're in the server and find what you're looking for, it's very hard to concentrate all the responses to a specific post, so you might find the question but need to scroll for ages to see if someone answered.

Not that either of these issues deterred people from using IRC.

There are solutions to problems hidden in these chats that will never be found. Personally, I've been using Discord as a powerful search engine. Luckily, the search functionality works well enough to where I can often find what I'm looking for. But this might only be a short term solution to an issue that needs an archive.

How?

> I hate the push to Discord since that basically makes you invisible.

That can also be a feature going forward given today's climate. Many people have lost jobs or not been hired after prospective employers did a simple Google search.

I'm so split on Reddit. While I agree with most of what you said the decline in quality of both content and comments, and the extreme moderation which has occurred over the last 4-5 years would really worry me if I was an investor. Presumably as a public company they would come under even more scrutiny for edgy content and feel the need to moderate content even more. And in general as the size of a social site's user base increases, the quality of the content drops as content starts to reflect the common denominator of its users.

I also feel like all social media the there are very toxic aspects to Reddit. I used to be very active on there, but after receiving constant abuse and very few constructive replies I now rarely participate in discussions there. Again with the company going public like Facebook and Twitter, Reddit could come under more scrutiny for this.

Assuming you buy for a fair valuation I don't think it's a bad investment per say, but I think there are a lot of risks there. I find myself wishing for an alternative to Reddit a lot these days because I really miss the high quality discussions I used to have there 10 or so years ago.

I agree with you about the abuse aspect. That's one thing this could change. I would for example change the voting system to not allow a negative score. It doesn't happen often, but it still doesn't feel good that people disagree and not only do they not upvote, but they downvote until you get negative score.

In my opinion if you disagree don't upvote, or at least downvote until 0. So people know the overall sentiment is negative, but there's not need to show how negative it is. If it's so bad to be offesive or innacurate, then report it. But downvoting until it's negative feels really overkill and feels like at the moment everyone not only disagrees, but hates you.

The constructive replies you talk about depends on the subreddit. There are subreddits that are literally lifesavers. For example subreddits to overcome emotional abuse and abusive relationships, you'll find support there that is simply amazing and not abusive at all. Or subreddits about certain niches that people are passionate about.

Unfortunately toxic people are sadistic and get a kick out of abusing people, so it's bound to happen. Best way is to report it, so the moderators either warn the person or ban them.

Wouldn't that present the same issues that removing the "dislike" counter on YouTube videos did?

For example, that video by The Verge where that guy builds a PC in the stupidest way - it's got thousands of likes for some reason but 10s of thousands of dislikes because it's not the way you should build a PC

Now the dislike counter is gone, those who see the video think "oh this has thousands of likes. It must be good".

Downvoting does attract idiots and pile-ons, but it does serve a purpose as a a lose indicator of content/comment quality

Based on previous IPOs of internet giants I think Reddit is a good bet but obviously lots of dynamics about the inner workings of cash flow etc that a layperson is only guessing about.

One area that seems inevitably would have to change is Reddit’s linking to pirated video clips. I’m sure the clips won’t go away but would be altered in a way so that reddit has deals with copyright owners and unskippable ads are played.

Ultimately all these media funded platforms under-weight advertising to begin with to build a user-base so become worse to use once established.

I would want to take a closer look at their engagement metrics. Of course they will officially show rising engagement, but in what form? Because for niche subs the engagement (active users) is reducing in many subs. People run to discord mostly, which is only partially better, but doesn't suffer power mods yet.

Rising engagement could also come from content that got linked and from people just visiting the page.

Buying votes for reddit is allegedly quite cheap as well.

I have less rosy predictions about what this IPO will do. I doubt it will fund better search. In fact, I’m thinking it will push it more into the ‘relevancy’ territory where you get a slurry of slightly related results, incoherent reco sys content curation, and deviation from vote and time decay ranking in favor of inscrutable algorithmic content feed ordering. All these things will make Reddit more successful from a mass market perspective.

> I doubt it will fund better search

While I think better search would be great for users, I'm convinced Reddit doesn't actually want better search.

Good search means I can easily find an old post with the answer to my questions. Bad search means I end up going to a subreddit and posting the same question that's been asked 15 times. Even if it's removed by the mods, it'll likely get one or two comments and votes before it does.

Bad search drives more engagement.

What really gets me is people who don't seem to understand how to search for information online. If you go to something like /r/wearethemusicmakers (a sub for music making, mostly based around computers and software) you'll see people asking questions like "what is an audio interface and why do I need one?"

You can type that question into google verbatim and find dozens of high production value Youtube videos explaining exactly what an audio interface is. Yet a shocking number of people opt to type this question into Reddit and then wait 8 hours for other users to post answers.

Are people really this incompetent at finding information online nowadays?

> Are people really this incompetent at finding information online nowadays?

I've thought for a bit about the question, and I don't think so.

Rather I think people don't understand how forums work, these questions are often from first-time posters or people that frequent the site very rarely, and still haven't learned asking simple questions a Google or forum search away is bad etiquette, makes for bad reading and will annoy the heck out of the regulars.

In their newbie eyes, the forum is the place where you ask your questions, provided they are relevant, but without considering how inane or oft-repeated they are.

> You can type that question into google verbatim and find dozens of high production value Youtube videos explaining exactly what an audio interface is.

Watching video is inefficient, I can read much quicker. I would search forums (such as Reddit) for an answer, but if I did not find one, I would post a question before I searched YouTube.

YouTube also has annoying product plug ins and ads and I have no idea what people are selling. I assume there is a lower proportion of advertisers to honest people just answering questions on YouTube, although I believe this has changed now due to the popularity of Reddit.

Not incompetent, they just don't think of the Internet as a place to get information. Most people, from what I observed, view Internet as a place to buy stuff, be entertained, and perhaps to talk to people.

The idea that you could get first-hand information for free, instead of relying on second-hand information from others, simply does not enter the picture for them.

On the other hand, asking that question would open very useful discussion, and create a place for clear helpful introduction.

The contextual information you can get to introduce you to a topic is where Reddit really shines. Some subs do this with a wiki, but the redesign tends to hide it.

The only problem is trying to have that question asked few enough times that people don't get tired of answering.

It will probably be the death of i.reddit.com and old.reddit.com

Problem with Reddit is being very replaceable. People don't want to lose their facebook/instagram/linkedin page because it has their content and also personal connections. Profiles on Reddit are more like Digg / Slashdot / Kuro5hin - few care about losing their post history and connections so when a competing site comes in with better features (fewer ads / different site-wide moderation approach / not looking so awful by default ) people will just move there.

Nope, any competitor just becomes a dumping ground for all the nasty shit that reddit has banned. If it were that simple, it would've been done by now, it certainly has been tried multiple times.

> Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session.

But for how long I wonder. Those niche communities continue to use Reddit because they can circumvent the dark-patterns and ads usually with a custom client.

And those clients depend upon reddit API. We've seen in the past that once the community-focused Internet platforms get large, Especially when they go public then the API restrictions are soon to follow as advertiser's interest becomes primary and the majority users don't care as they're not in for those niche communities.

> Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse

I agree. But first they'll have to get on the blockchain, and then build up their autonomous vehicle division. No big deal, just use CRISPR.

Agreed, one sub in particular is /r/lawncare. There is a very helpful post for beginners that puts together the whole process from spring through fall. This is the kind of non-paid for content shill that makes niche communities really interesting.

https://reddit.com/r/lawncare/comments/fb1gjj/a_beginners_gu...

> Twitter has very high quality content

Can you give me an example? I have zero followers/following on Twitter and just use Tweetdeck so I'd like to know what I should be looking for.

@foone is always a good bet, if you are interested in old technology.

Just be prepared for "this tweet thread should've been a blogpost" -style tweeting :)

(Yes they have ADHD and this helps etc etc, I know).

Tiktok is not really based on your social graph. I think it’s kinda like Reddit in some ways but far less in depth content and actual interaction.

Tiktok is for a TV audience and that will bring them massive user numbers.

It can indeed be entertaining from time to time, but consumption of content is extremely passive.

You are correct in that it's not based on an explicit social graph (i.e. who I tag as my "friend"), but it is based on an implicit social graph (i.e. who I like watching/listening to).

> Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session.

Sounds similar to Twitter and YouTube.

I have yet to find any quality content on twitter.

Twitter really depends on who you follow. I've no idea how I got to the point where I have an interesting feed and attempts to follow the same process on Instagram have so far failed.

There is some, but it is mostly not the popular content or anything that trends. It is people orientated, so for me it is mostly a curated list of links.

>Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse

what is the metaverse? what are you talking about?

I feel like there's some of the most foul...obnoxious...people on Reddit...but at least they're not the same people in FB groups... which is to say they're my obnoxious sycophant people.

In other words...social media can really showcase the best/worst of people but Reddit kinda at least can give some intellectual content and discussion. I also kinda just 'get' the snark/culture of reddit as it were, and interestingly enough it doesn't matter my political persuasion as there's enough different corners of reddit to find where I fit in. People are also more willing to share their real thoughts when there's some measure of anonymity whether that's good or bad, who knows.

Reddit + HN is basically my source of news/new thoughts. Best part of reddit is that topics are generally single groups, where there's like 5 yard sale groups on FB JUST for my city in a county with 45k people in rural utah, on FB nothing's stopping there being 2 or 200 SLC groups, but on reddit - everyone just would go to the one w/ the most subscribers/content/activity....

FB is nothing but memes or people trying to sell something. Of course Reddit going public will probably make it incentivized to turn more of a profit and go that way as well.

My only real gripe w/ Reddit is that I can't use the login via Relay on Android because something's jacked w/ my main account... if I go to user/prefs I get an error after a long wait...and it's been reported for a few months and no fix...

Eventually, it will go the same way Facebook has gone, and email before that. Was once fun and useful, now, at best, a tool and a chore.

Everything you described makes this public offering a potential bad thing. Whats going to happen when activist investors want a certain subreddit/post removed? What about ad companies not liking some content/subreddit? Moderation is going to get very strict. The relative anonymity of reddit may disappear. We have already seen the establishment supposedly co-opt the big subreddits like /r/politics. Now they will focus on snuffing out all the little guys on the platform. Everything you listed as a positive may disappear over time.

HN might become what Reddit is now. On the flip side the difficulty of removing posts here/simple upvote system/other limiting features may prevent that from ever happening. There have been attempts to clone Reddit, all have been terrible. Its clear that to create an equivalent, its going to take more than a weekend project.

> Good! I‘ll go long on them.

Nothing specific on Reddit, but I'd like to point out that when you go long on a stock, you should at least try to possess some specific knowledge that most people don't have about that company.

Reddit might be great; but if everyone knows about it, then the price is going to reflect that already.

> Reddit might be great; but if everyone knows about it, then the price is going to reflect that already.

I think that's the wrong way to look at stocks. What you're describing goes along with the common belief that all known information is already "priced in". This is silly.

The price of a stock reflects the consensus/average estimation of the worth of the company. Your personal assessment is going to depend on what you personally believe in, but you could be holding a minority viewpoint. If 95% of investors believe that a company will have 10B in revenue in 5 years, but you interpret the facts differently and believe (correctly) that the company will make 50B in 5 years, then even though you are basing your estimation on the same facts as everyone else, if the majority interprets the facts incorrectly, then the information is not "priced in". As the company proves itself successful, the consensus estimate will shift. People will reassess their belief that certain outcomes are more or less likely. What matters isn't necessarily having information that other investors don't have, it's interpreting that information better than others, and making more accurate inferences.

When it comes to reddit, more specifically, you probably don't have access to any more information than every analyst on wall street, but there's a key difference, which is that most of these people probably have never used reddit, and have a very limited understanding of how it works or its potential. So, in some ways, your understanding of the functioning of reddit, as a reddit user, could actually give you an edge.

> but there's a key difference, which is that most of these people probably have never used reddit, and have a very limited understanding of how it works or its potential.

Why would you think this?

Having insider knowledge as an outsider is great, but you can also long a stock if you think the company has a strong vision and is executing on it.

I love reddit as a user. But, I would not have considered investing in them since it seems like they've struggled to make money... but according to the article, Q2 ad revenue was $100 million (3x YoY).

> An even wilder bet: Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse (as a news outlet of sorts, on steroids) and even potentially minimize the need for Google Search.

Doing so will first require the Reddit team to develop a competent search engine. Searching Google or DDG with site:reddit.com is far better than native Reddit search for topics. The Camas Reddit search is what you need for a power search to find that one post that you swear you've read five years ago. Neither use case is well-served by the current search implementation on Reddit itself.

Whenever I need to query the hive mind I just search directly on Reddit now, after a long period of searching in google with the keyword "reddit" included.

If I am querying something technical for work or hobby development I use the HN Algolia search.

Twitter is the only other social network I keep an account on, but barely ever visit because of the firehose of noise despite having a painstakingly selected list of accounts followed. E.g. lots of journalists doing great work, but also posting a lot of personal life updates that are not relevant to me.

I had a Reddit account for five years but never logged in. Until about six months ago when I rediscovered Reddit. I now spend more time on Reddit than the rest of the internet combined. I have a personal account and a work account. For work stuff, it's catching up with Stackoverflow in my technical discussions. For personal stuff, I don't even know of a comparable site. I am a small BI consultancy and I would definitely spend ad money on Reddit once they get their shit together.

I would certainly bet on them going up in the short term. However, going public carries more scrutiny, and that means their two existing problems will be catapulted into the public eye at some point, just as they have been for Facebook:

- political extremism

- very flimsy segregation of NSFW material (and usernames are basically not censored)

I doubt they would be dumb enough to do a Tumblr, but it can't be ruled out entirely.

> Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session.

For now. Just watch what happens to it under constant pressure from Wall Street to grow and grow and grow...

Yeah Reddit’s different because it’s not public. Fuck this news is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. The only thing I could imagine worse is if Wikipedia went public or got bought by saudi Arabian investors

I rarely Google without using site at first, reddit, SO/exchange, and two French forums (teaching related queries). Anything else from Google /search engine is garbage.

>> Anecdotally, a VERY LARGE percentage of my Google searches end in “site:reddit.com” these days.

That seems strange to me. Most of my search results don't lead there. This seems like something worth investigating on your part. Maybe google knows you like reddit, tend to follow links there, and hence puts them higher in your search rankings? Is that a thing with google? I think it may be based on my own past experience too.

I think you misunderstand, OP is purposefully adding "site:reddit.com" to their search query, to only get results from Reddit. Google isn't adding it for them.

I do this sometimes too, because it's one of the ways to get actual opinions on something, and not just worthless blog spam.

Oh, that makes sense.

OP is adding `site:reddit.com` to tell Google to find results from reddit instead of elsewhere. If their workflow is like mine, it goes 1. enter search, 2. get frustrated with spammy / marketing / ad results, 3. limit to reddit, 4. find thoughtful human with genuine answer / feedback.

If Reddit were higher in their search rankings, they wouldn't need to add site:reddit.com to their search words.

I also find searching Reddit, especially for introductory advice, to be very commonly useful. Since Reddit's search sucks, I usually use duckduckgo or Google to search it.

I think it would be worth investigating on your part as well. Next time you do a Google search that will be heavily populated by blog spam and listicles, append “site:reddit.com” to instead get long user-rank-sorted discussions among actual human beings.

Reddit has been steadily going to shit. They became incredibly trigger happy censoring anything and anyone outside of the echo chamber there. I still visit it, but I am short on them.