Facebook may be losing its status as a big tech monopoly after many failed ventures. Vice. Facebook remains one of the largest tech companies but it has shed $800 billion in market capitalization in the past year. Much of this is due to the failure of Metaverse, Facebook's 3d effort. The effort has hemorrhaged money for little gain, costing over $21 billion between 2019 and 2021. Facebook is also facing problems from another tech giant, Apple, which will charge Facebook for advertising made via the Facebook app. Facebook has also largely failed to compete with competitors like Amazon and TikTok.
My Comment:
In the interest of full disclosure, I have bought advertisement from Facebook in the past. I probably spent less than $50 and have not done so since Facebook changed their terms of service for advertisement. I was not comfortable giving Facebook my drivers license so I was unable to purchase anymore advertisement, even though they were semi-effective in driving traffic to my blog. I also should disclose that Facebook recently gave me a 30-day ban from purchasing advertising, which I haven't done in more than five years, for making a reference to a classic Simpsons bit. So don't expect me to be completely unbiased in this post.
In short, Facebook's decisions have been baffling to say the least. At the top of the list is the Metaverse, Zuckerberg's VR dream. I never really understood who the Metaverse was going to appeal to. There were already VR chat programs out there and they are all much better than Metaverse. Indeed, it seemed like Facebook ripped off VR chat and tried to expand on it.
The other problem is that very few people have PC's powerful enough to actually run and support the Metaverse. I know my gaming laptop cannot run it because it does not have a powerful enough graphics card to do so. And even if I did, I would have to buy an expensive VR headset as well. And given the shortage of graphics cards and semiconductors there is a hard limit of how many people can actually get into VR right now. I know I have been looking to upgrade my gaming laptop but most online stores do not have many affordable gaming PC's right now.
And even if you did have a PC capable of running Metaverse, there is apparently very little to do there. There isn't a high end gaming experience, good shopping or even a community to chat with. From what I understand it's mostly a ghost town.
Facebook has a multitude of other problems. Like I mentioned, censorship is a huge problem. I don't feel comfortable buying advertising there because I'm afraid the extra scrutiny will result in my personal account being banned along with my blog's page. Given that other social media outlets, like Twitter, Parler and Gab, are moving towards lower levels of censorship there isn't much reason to stay on Facebook if you are concerned about censorship.
I also have to say that the app is basically unusable. Instead of photos and updates from my friends, every time I use the app all I see are reels, sponsored stories and advertisement. It's a lot better on my PC where I have UBlock Origin and Facebook Purity installed, but even then there isn't as much content compared to what it used to be. Facebook was a lot more fun in my college days where all you would see is people's drunk photos from the weekend.
Facebook also is just not seen as cool anymore. Part of it is the perception that people are just on there to argue politics. This is probably true, and I know that I have gotten on some major arguments up there. Other apps, like TikTok, for all their flaws, offer something positive, like funny videos or sexy women dancing. Facebook doesn't seem to have that anymore for the most part.
Apple messing with them is a big problem as well. Given the absurd number of ads and sponsored stories I see whenever I use my iPhone to use the Facebook app, Facebook must be making bank off of them. Apple taking a 30% cut will probably end up being worth millions, if not billions, of dollars.
With all that being said, I do think that Facebook has some advantages. Instagram remains extremely popular and so is WhatsApp. And it's not like Facebook isn't making billions of dollars all the time. Just because they have mad some boneheaded decisions does not mean that they are on the way out.
No comments:
Post a Comment