Is it really, though? I feel like Myspace was similar to Facebook as it launched, but Facebook has since grown into a behemoth walled garden that replaces a good fraction of the internet outside of tech-nerd circles.
And the demographics that facebook wants to target is very quickly migrating away (to tiktok mostly). Even google is scared of tiktok (enough to pour untold amount of resources to try catch up via youtube shorts).
It's funny, because Vine had this market first, and it failed spectacularly - if only they built a better recommendation engine!
MySpace never really had a path to profitability. It was conceptually very similar, but was not as well realized. What Facebook figured out was scale. MySpace was basically unusable during peak traffic times when Facebook was first taking off around 2005-2006.
I have always compared Facebook to Yahoo. It will kick around for a long time, but it isn’t really doing anything important or impressive. They know this. It is why they are hard pivoting to the metaverse. They need something new if only to win hearts and minds and wall street over until they figure something else out.
I don't see why that's a problem. Monopolizing the entire EU and South Asia market is huge. It is pretty popular in the US too, and the app of choice of immigrant communities.
> getting eaten up by Tik Tok.
Tiktok has reels, but I haven't heard any insta under complain about the core photo sharing and stories feature. It is perfectly fine. The reels are straight from tiktok tho.
> Oculus lost money
Oculus faces a massive technical challenge, but if it pulls through, Facebook will have such a huge 1st movers advantage it will be unsurmountable. It is a big bet, but it is genuinely the only true revolution in media consumption that I can see around the horizon.
Unless Whatsapp starts showing revenues it's facing 2 tailwinds which is No Revenue and small US user base. Because everyone sees $ signs from only us and china lol.
Core Photo and Stories is shrinking. They're all saying the Tik Tok format is the future now. I don't know what is true, but that's a major tailwind that they're facing a lot of mainstream press is pointing out.
Agree with your point on Oculus. Just pointing the negative news about it. Aside from that it's looking good in terms of the tech and how they're dominating the space.
No VR world for me though, but an AR world is intriguing!
Have you used a vr headset? It's great for gaming if you want to experience immersion, but for everyone else it's like being blind folded (not ideal in a public or office environment).
No matter how good the hardware gets, vr will not reach mainstream audiences for a similar reason 3d glasses didn't. No one likes putting technology on their heads or faces. Spectacles are an exception.
I'm not really a fan of this argument, I think it really fails in explaining the failure of 3d glasses. 3d TV/films don't really change anything about delivery of content, it is a slight augmentation of regular 2d.
If we could achieve full star trek holodeck but needed a headset (so maybe mixed with a bit of matrix) I don't anyone would be complaining.
Now, vr still isn't holodeck level obviously and it's still an open question if it's usefulness can overcome the downsides of a headset but it will die for being of limited utility, not because it is a headset.