I believe the concerns around the lack of a platform were both about "moat-defining" and the possibility of being deplatformed by Apple and/or Google.
2nd Life, The Simms, various MMORPGS. We have loads of experience buildings virtual worlds with virtual belongings and conducting meetings virtually. I was part of a WOW guild that had meetings about raids and other small bits of admin stuff in game.
But a company known for being sketchy as heck slaps on 3D goggles and makes it less fun and I’m supposed to want to be in it?
I think you’ll find that a lot of people were skeptical.
Strapping a screen to your face is not ergonomic. It isn't practical.
That argument is only sound for as long as the screen is unwieldy. If you could wear a pair of glasses that magically converted your laptop into a stable, triple-screen workstation, it'd be a no-brainer to assert that it was useful in at least some circumstances -- working on planes, trains, automobiles now becomes more and more possible. If the tech then progressed to the point where you could do that from a phone, and not require a laptop, or even necessarily pulling the phone out of your pocket, then it seemed like a pretty powerful productivity feature _at least_ some of the time, and if executed well enough, it wouldn't shock me to see people giving up their laptops in the same way that many people don't bother having tower PC computers any more.
That's not really the bet they were making. It was deeper than that.
Facebook discovered that people are willing to use their product to dissociate to an extreme degree. There are some people out there whose entire lives are on FB and Instagram. Take their profiles away, and you would literally erase the livelihood and even identities of some individuals out there. They have no relationships and no skills in the material world. Their entire existence is a profile, and the relationships cultivated in that profile. Just as you and I cease to exist in the material world when we close our eyes and go to bed, these people cease to exist at all when they log off of Facebook and Instagram.
And so Meta, being the consumer-focused company it is, was looking to give their best customers exactly what they want: a way to complete their dissociation in the material world, and to bring even more of their existence into the metaverse, the digital plane of existence for many of their customers. Their pitch for metaverse meetings seems so strange to us on the material plane because in-person meetings are the last thing we'd replicate digitally. But for those who are ready to dissociate into the digital plane, a digital meeting room is the next logical step.
It's like what Agent Smith says about the first version of the Matrix. Yeah, it was perfect, but it wasn't real. So they added pain and suffering to make it real. The FB can offer a great dissociative experience if that's what you're looking for, but if you're really looking to let go of the material plane, you need to bring in all the pain and suffering you're used to into the metaverse. Otherwise the distinct lack of meetings gives away the charade.
The problem for Meta is that the Metaverse is a very expensive proposition, and there are only so many hardcore FB and Instagram addicts at this point willing to dissociate to that degree. The rest of us enjoy our material plane of existence, and aren't addicted to Facebook and Instagram the way their users are.
And there it is, the word "user", which reminds us that FB customers really have a lot in common with drug addicts.
That is 100% unlike the FB experience, where someone else provides a prompt (post), and you join in the comments.
That's a terrible bet. Anyone who has ever played a 3D game will immediately understand that a 3D world is a strictly inferior interface for almost all use cases where you are actually trying to get something done, e.g. read and answer an email.
That's the safe bet, yes. Maybe not even with more pixels.
Also I think people only think from the "what do I gain?" perspective. There is a comment below that asks "what do you think display technology will be like in 20 years?" I won't argue that 2 high res screens that can show my entire workspace where ever I am would not be awesome. I would try that.
But consider all the things you do while you work:
- Eat and drink - Stare out the window - Get up and go to the bathroom - Just have a stretch, spin in your chair.
And now 2 tiny 4k screens strapped to your head is no longer ergonomic and isn't going to cut it. And a cheap and normal screens looks really good.
Actually, that idea is less outlandish now; in fact, they should double-down on it if they can.
A few years ago ChatGPT and AI as they are now were not even close to allowing people to use something other than screen with (perhaps on-screen, perhaps physical) keyboard.
With the advances we've now seen in AI, it makes VR more likely[1] to be the main interface to the computer, not less likely. Hence, they should double-down on VR and immediately integrate AI, even if it means ditching the bulky headset that users have already rejected.
A ChatGPT-like assistant could be the final puzzle piece that causes users to stop using the monitor/screen/keyboard for interacting with their social network.
Not to say that they'll switch to VR, but it becomes ever more probably, with AI assistance, to ditch the current interaction mechanism for social network users.
[1] Still pretty unlikely, but more likely than before.
I had a Sony Ericsson p900 a few years before the iPhone, it had a small keyboard you’d usually flip out of the way to get a full screen touch display: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_P900
I dunno about you, but I and basically everyone in my circles at the time agreed that it was most likely a terrible idea.
Until and unless there's a truly convenient piece of hardware to get one into a virtual space—I'm talking weight and bulk comparable to prescription eyeglasses, no wires going beyond your body (ie, maybe a pack at the belt/pocket/something like that), and some form of extremely intuitive UI—you're not going to get people interested in regular interactions in a VR/AR space.
Frankly, even once we do have something like that, I think it unlikely that many people would choose to do things like meetings in a virtual space over something simpler like Zoom, even if they did already own the hardware.
And none of these views have changed over the past few years.
No; I think Zuck has been far too isolated and out of touch with how regular people operate for too long, and when faced with, as you say, the fact that Facebook was only running on other people's platforms—and it became clear that no one was interested in making Facebook their platform, like by buying a Facebook phone—he convinced himself that this was The Next Big Thing based on sheer desperation.
Growing up I was used to there being more useful and fun tech gadgets than I could ever afford. Now it’s like unless they own your entire online presence they don’t want your money. Give me that dumb iPod v1.0 which gets sand in the wheel and lasts an hour on battery but for VR. The idea was all your music on the go and it met that goal.
For VR it should be hands free/hands minimal portable productivity. Give that shitty resolution and battery life. I would take navigating YouTube, PDFs, email at the lowest res feasible and 2 hour batteries and isn’t gigantic and prevents you from normal activities. Don’t build a multi billion dollar platform.
Why? Who else would want that?
But I'm not a Gadget Guy. Why would I want shitty YouTube in VR when I have good YouTube on my phone?
And that's not inherently a bad thing. Despite his often shrill detractors, Tim Cook, who's definitely a "bureaucracy expert" more than he is a "product expert", has done a darn good job leading Apple since Steve Jobs' untimely death. The thing is, he knows to listen to the product experts, and to put the really good ones in positions of some power within the hierarchy.
The problem comes when your "bureaucracy experts" only value what they understand: Bureaucracy. Numbers. Finances, especially in the short-term sense.
Now, I honestly don't think this is precisely Zuckerberg's problem. From what I've seen, I don't think he's necessarily a "bureaucracy expert" himself—but nor is he a "product expert" in the same sense as someone like Jobs or Ive; he helped to create the original Facebook, but I don't believe he's ever come up with any other products that have seen any real success (though correct me if I'm wrong). He's more of a founder who rode a wave of money to where he is, and bought into the idea that that meant he was somehow smarter than everyone else.
Same. No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame.
There are fairly serious differences between the release of the iPod and the announcement of Facebook's shift to "Meta", and one guy being wrong one time, however famously, does not have any implications for other people being wrong in completely different circumstances, so this feels pointlessly dismissive.
Easy way to prove this is to ask people what the obvious winners and losers will be in the next 5 years, and then see how they've allocated they're investments to that. If you can predict the market so obviously, you'll be rich.
Didn't even know you were on here!
They've made some missteps, but it's not even close to being over.
I don't really understand this take. Generative AI is a complement to the metaverse. Biggest problem metaverses face is having good content since it's quite a bit more difficult to create. Using generative AI to fill the metaverse is not a pivot, it's been the plan all along.
Only people who are deeply involved in tech think that Mark Zuckerberg investing in something makes it happen.
Everyone else correctly understands he is not a main character, but someone who rode the wave of social media adaptation.
Except for all of the people who were saying it was a bad direction from the start. It certainly looked like a bad direction.
Everybody was making fun of it since it was announced.
This seems like a bit of 20/20 hindsight. At the time, the biggest concern Zuckerberg had was that they didn't own a platform. Apple had the iOS ecosystem, Google had Android, Microsoft had Windows, Amazon had AWS and their logistical moat. Zuckerberg made a bet that the world would move to VR similarly to the way the world moved to PCs in the 80s, which allowed Microsoft to take over a big chunk of the world.
Zuckerberg's fear wasn't unreasonable, he just bet wrong. Apple's privacy changes had a huge impact to Facebook, and the other FAANG without a "moat-defining platform", Netflix, is also in the most precarious position among the big techs.
That said, I agree with most of the other comments. I can see VR evolving a little beyond gaming I guess, but it's actually kind of a nightmare to imagine myself wearing a fucking headset all day. At this point I think Zuckerberg knows he bet wrong and AI is the future, and he's clearly trying to pivot, but it's really hard to move a big company like Meta quickly, and it also means he has to admit he just lit billions and billions on fire.