Facebook Branding to Meta

[engine]

Mark Zuckerberg has announced the rebranding of Facebook, and it's going to be called, Meta, to reflect the changes that Zuckerberg sees, the metaverse.

We just announced that we’re making a fundamental change to our company. We’re now looking at and reporting on our business as two different segments: one for our family of apps and one for our work on future platforms. Our work on the metaverse is not just one of these segments. The metaverse encompasses both the social experiences and future technology. As we broaden our vision, it’s time for us to adopt a new brand.

To reflect who we are and the future we hope to build, I’m proud to share that our company is now Meta.

Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and their brands aren’t changing either. We’re still the company that designs technology around people.

[about.fb.com...]

[NickMNS]

And this...
Facebook's metaverse will support NFTs.
[coindesk.com...]

But I'm skeptical as to how this is all going to work. NFTs suggests a decentralized system, which is the direct opposite of Facebook's business model. I must assume that Facebook will build a walled metaverse, where only its own NFTs will work, and they will be rendered worthless outside of their own network. Which is basically no different from what they do now, just more buzzwords, glitzier UI and a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

[tangor]

Did Zuck think that when g went abc that gave them an edge and decided he needed to meta to compete?

ADJECTIVE
(of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.
"the enterprise is inherently “meta,” since it doesn't review movies, for example, it reviews the reviewers who review movies"

Sounds about right. :)

Actually, kind of a cool name, so I'm all for it!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

"You have commited a Meta crime", banned! j/k,

Amid reports that Facebook has misled shareholders about significant declines in teens and younger users, Mark Zuckerberg said the company was “retooling” in order to make “serving young adults” its top priority. To do that, the company plans to make “significant changes” to its Facebook and Instagram apps, and spend billions of dollars building out its vision for a “metaverse.”

Citing increased competition from TikTok and iMessage, Zuckerberg said the company would do more to win over “young adult” users, even if it came at the expense of older users. He said the company’s TikTok rival Reels would be “as important for our products as Stories.” “We also expect to make significant changes to Instagram and Facebook in the next year to further lean into video and make Reels a more central part of the experience,” Zuckerberg said.

https://www.reportdoor.com/mark-zuckerberg-says-facebooks-future-is-young-adults-and-the-metaverse/

It goes on to say that the reports about mental health issues in young people prompted urgency in going in a new direction. I don't like this move at all, it feels like desperation, or someone discovering Super Mario for the first time(which was cool, but is now done). Facebook, to many, was just a way to keep in passive touch with others they knew, to get updates without needing to interact. Just from the point of view that Zuck's companies will now become hyper-dependent on expensive headsets suggests this might have moved along too quickly.

Time will tell.

A bit of advice to developers out there - LET YOUR USERS USE YOUR STUFF AS THEY WANT WHEN POSSIBLE, forcing them to act as you want tends to backfire, ask MySpace. Was anyone asking for reels to become the central facebook experience? I don't think so... what have you done Mr Zuckerberg?

[engine]

I've had time to think more about this and it's quite clear that MZ sees users entering a virtual world. I Hesitate to use the word parallel world, but, perhaps...

I totally get the idea of virtual meetings in a 3D environment, such as that demonstrated by Microsoft's HoloLens, [webmasterworld.com] and perhaps even an avatar in that environment. Only a very large business with such a user base could do this. However, I do find the idea of creating a virtual other world a dangerous path to follow. The mental health of people is already challenging, and for some the virtual metaverse might be a step too far, imho.

There is one other aspect in this and that's the name change is a bit of smoke and mirrors, again, imho.

[NickMNS]

I think what is being missed here is that there is major paradigm shift happening on the web. The web is shifting from web2 to web3 and the "Metaverse" is code for web3. VR/AR is just UI but the underlying shift has to do with ownership of the data in the web3 paradigm the user owns and controls their own data (NFT's, and Crypto currencies). This shift is an existential threat to Facebook's business model, they are now trying to use their money and power to wall off the "Metaverse" like they did the web2 web.

This branding announcement come on the heels of these related ones:
[theverge.com...]
[techradar.com...]

[mcneely]

Google Glasses comes to mind here -- Adoption would be key

Currently, Instagram is like if the high school cafeteria were a website and Facebook is where all of it's users are treated to ads and group posts instead of the supposed interactions amongst friends. Groups are all fine and dandy, that is, if it were still 2003. MSN dumped groups and never looked back.

Recommendations from someone who knows someone, who knows someone else seems pretty low end to me, but at this point, I think that's all Facebook has right now.
Teens and young people? Suffice it to say that that ship has sailed. Phones rule the roost with teens and I find it highly unlikely that Facebook will ever win the day with a cumbersome, bulky, expensive, and ad ridden alternative.

Just like with Google Glasses - They were fine for some, but not fine for most. People just aren't interested in spending the time or the money for one more piece of hardware that will be obsolete in 18 months.

Good luck to Facebook in their pursuit of that almighty dollar though -- They're going to need it.

[engine]

@NickMNS Web 2 to Web 3?

Surely, this is not Web3, but is Metaverse1

@mcneely

People just aren't interested in spending the time or the money for one more piece of hardware that will be obsolete in 18 months.

I suspect you're correct in one respect, in that it may not be everyone.

[NickMNS]

Surely, this is not Web3, but is Metaverse1

From this article:
[bloomberg.com...]

All the components of a metaverse exist today. The missing piece of the puzzle is to join together all the building blocks used by thousands of competing businesses and creators. Achieve that, and you have your metaverse.

There are two ways to "achieve that"
1- Build a single platform controlled by one central controlling organization that allows participants in, the Facebook model. Which essentially breaks the concept of the metaverse.
2- The blockchain, which uses is decentralized trustless ecosystem to allow competing business and creators to interact on equal footing.

Frankly the Bloomberg article is behind the times, and really Facebook is too, and they are now playing catch up.

The missing piece of the puzzle

The puzzle has already been solved.

[decentraland.org...]
[cointelegraph.com...]
[dappradar.com...]

And there is also the play to earn games that fit into this space:
[axieinfinity.com...]
[theverge.com...]

Metaverse is web3, or one part of it.

[NickMNS]

Further to my post above, Coindesk the blockchain news website published this story on the topic.
[coindesk.com...]
Many of the points raise in this thread, by me and by others, are echoed in the piece.

[buckworks]

This is a side issue but every time I see that icon I think of a lung x-ray.

[ronin]

Second Life has been around and evolving for a decade and a half, so... if anyone wanted to participate in a Metaverse, wouldn't they be spending a little of their time (at least) in Second Life?

The fact that it's there and no-one I know has shown any interest in Second Life since 2007... I'm sure there must be conclusions to draw from this.

[robzilla]

Difficult news, surely, for the people who let the meta.com domain expire circa 2010-2012 [twitter.com].

[tangor]

This is a side issue but every time I see that icon I think of a lung x-ray.

Heh! The symbol reminds me of Plastic Man's goggles (revealing my age!)

[engine]

There's an interesting write-up on cnbc about Jason Rubin discussing this in 2018.

In June 2018, Oculus executive Jason Rubin sent an email to Facebook board member Marc Andreessen with the subject line “The Metaverse.”

“We believe that the right way to break through consumer indifference to VR is to deliver what they expect and want from the medium: THE METAVERSE,” reads the first slide of a 50-page document outlining a strategy for building a virtual world.

[cnbc.com...]

[bwnbwn]

Already a company named Meta filed a trademark back in August they want 20m to sell
Funny

[RhinoFish]

FB building and running the Metaverse is like the US Post Office building and running our future time travel portals.

[ronin]

I suspect that if the Metaverse isn't built on open protocols* then it will end up being AOL 3.0.

* No, I mean real open protocols, like HTTP and JSON. (Not like OpenGraph.)

[ronin]

This is fun reading.

A Brief History of Metaverses (and their issues) by Ethan Zuckerman:

[theatlantic.com...]

[mack]

When we look at the past one thing is clear... No social media platform has survived the test of time. It looks almost as if Facebook is trying to reinvent itself right as the decline arrives. One problem I see if that many users (specifically younger users) have already jumped ship. Facebook/Meta needs to offer something very novel and unique to encourage that group of users back.

Mack.

[ronin]

No social media platform has survived the test of time.

I wonder if there's a useful distinction to be made between a

social media platform

and, more generally, a

social media format

.

There are (or were) numerous twitter-alike platforms (mastodon,identi.ca, app.net etc.) and while none of them are / were even a fraction as well-known as the premier micro-blogging platform, we might argue that they represent implementations of the same social media format.

There are fewer Facebook-alikes (although Odnoklassniki, Vkontakte and others. exist) and we might argue that they represent implementatons of another social media format.

If we accept this, then, arguably, the fundamental social media format is the text message. The same basic unit communicated by Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger in the late 1990s; the same basic unit communicated by FB Messenger, Line, Viber, WhatsApp and Signal today.

Arguably, from a teleological perspective newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards and email are all enhanced proto-versions of that basic social media unit and from a present-day perspective instagram, snapchat, tik-tok etc. are all enhanced contemporary versions of that same basic social media unit.

By extension, any 3D-immersive-environment platform represents another genre of enhanced text-message (in this case spectacularly - perhaps even excessively - enhanced).

But (for anyone still following) perhaps we don't really need any of these platforms at all?

Perhaps all we need is a single, standardised (albeit infinitely enhance-able) text-message protocol?

[tangor]

Like email? :)

Returning to the OP ... what I have noticed in MSM since the announcement is that few, if any, have changed their reporting from facebook to Meta ... it might take some time for fb to make the change, unlike google (which did not change their name, just their parent company).

It is difficult to "change brands".

[NickMNS]

@Ronin You bring up some good points, and I understand your perspective, but I disagree. The fundamental difference between Facebook and the other "social media formats" that came before is that none of those understood, and leveraged the network effect created by their systems. Facebook is one of the companies with the strongest network effects. We see it, when everyone see their shady data privacy practices, everyone "quits" facebook, but then returns once they realize that there entire social existence is dependent on it.

Even if you were to create another better version of Facebook, you still couldn't beat them, because of the network effects.

The only thing that can beat Facebook is to create a network for which Facebook becomes only a small part. I don't think any one company could build that, but if many companies could collaborate trustlessly to build parts of an interoperable network then Facebook would loose it's advantage. Web3, and the Metaverse make this possible. Facebook knows this and sees it as an existential threat and that is why they are pursuing this "Metaverse" so aggressively. Put simply if you can easily meet up with your friends in the "metaverse" then what is the point of a facebook page with a few "old" photos and a some comments in text format.

[ronin]

@NickMNS - I absolutely agree with you about Facebook and the network effect - I've made the same point, myself, before (on these forums) that Facebook and Twitter's positions are difficult to challenge, not because the technology they've developed is beyond replication (it isn't) but because of the networks they've successfully established.

But that's part of the point I'm making about the significance of standardised protocols: in the absence of a protocol, we can build a platform, grow it fast, and take advantage of the network effect to give it an unassailable position.

In the presence of a standard open protocol... I'd like to see any of us try that.

For instance... what's the leading email platform / what's the leading SMS platform? Do these questions even make sense?

The only thing that can beat Facebook is to create a network for which Facebook becomes only a small part. I don't think any one company could build that, but if many companies could collaborate trustlessly to build parts of an interoperable network then Facebook would lose it's advantage.

Better yet, a public, open, standard protocol would make a behemoth like Facebook substantially irrelevant.

Like email? :)

Yes, like email.

Like... the child of email (from the 1970s) + SMS (from the 1990s) + declarative web (HTML & CSS) (from the 2000s).

It looks almost as if Facebook is trying to reinvent itself right as the decline arrives.

I agree. But, beyond all the smoke and mirrors, Facebook's ambition to "upgrade" to Meta simply results in an elaborate, less efficient form of text-messaging being replaced by an even more elaborate and even less efficient form of text-messaging.

I'm all for immersive 3D environments. For games and for education, I think there is great potential to be unlocked.

But interacting polygons for peer-to-peer, many-to-many communication? It feels (to me) like massive gimmicky overkill.

Here's a thought experiment:

Imagine the open, standards-based messaging protocol I'm envisioning above already exists.

Imagine, further, that a plethora of clients exist which can handle this protocol. Some reproduce group conversations in a WhatsApp-like environment; others reproduce the same group conversation in a Facebook-like environment; still others reproduce the same group conversation in a Metaverse-like environment.

How popular do we imagine that the Metaverse-like clients remain after the initial delight of interacting within an immersive 3D environment wears off?

[ronin]

Contain your enthusiasm:

[theverge.com...]

The comments are the best part.

[engine]

I've tried this (not specifically Meta's), and the effect it has is to make me feel queasy.
As a user, i'm not the target audience, however, I can think of several ways this could be monetised.

Will it really become a "thing"? I don't know, and I have my doubts.

Does it compete with similar systems already on the market? I'm not sure it does, right now. It's really all about FB/Meta's land-grab.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Meta lets you be a fat unemployable and unwashed slob needing to put zero effort into yourself to meet people's make believe avatars.

Reality matters.

[ronin]

Reality matters.

Ah, but that's the deepest question of VR.

Where is reality?

We're back in Plato's cave.

[DenisMatsko]

Even though they're now Meta, old problems will follow them. Still to difficult to work with FB without get banned. In 2017 it was way better.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], DenisMatsko!