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Tech Thread

I think Zuck is wrong with this pivot into 3D/Virtual, but he wasn't wrong that something drastic needed to change with Facebook. The demo is getting older every day and advertising revenue has flattened out. They needed to do something but this was too much of a departure on a few fronts. It's targeting a demo that kind of doesn't give a fuck about facebook as a brand/product (because it's 40-65+ main user demo simply isn't comfortable with virtual reality anything...I run into this regularly with 40+ clients) and the tech is okay now, but probably 10 years away from being immersive in any real way, which is just too far away for the purpose of this pivot.

It's probably a good time for Zuck to step aside and let a new set of ideas take over. They probably would have been better off just buying TikTok or some shit
 
It's still a behemoth with IG and Whatsapp, not to mention FB is no slouch either even though it doesn't grab attention of the younger demos.

But I think the "meta" rebranding was an act of sheer idiocy, even if piling all that cash into that division wasn't (though it probably was, but who knows if first mover principles will validate it later, I honestly haven't kept up with what they're even doing anymore to know, other than the numbers associated with the activities).

Your business is consulting with VR stuff these days?
 
The "old" reputation of Facebook is why they changed the name. And as someone who waited for years for VR, and it's been really underwhelming so far, I just assumed they had advanced the tech to the point where this had a chance to work. If it's really 10 years away then this was an unbelievably poor decision. I'm not convinced it's 10 years away just yet though from at least a passably decent product... But it seems clear it's not ready for prime time yet.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
Your business is consulting with VR stuff these days?
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I do 3D/Virtual Tour capture and virtual tour building for real estate, homebuilders, retail/hospitality as one of my business lines, so sort of. I'm not involved in the VR headset style stuff, but I've spent a fair bit of time trying to engage and convince 50+ yr old managers/owners when 3D spaces are useful, when they're not, how to sell with them, end user preferences, etc. It's an excellent format that marries some of the strengths of still photo, and video when done even remotely right.

50+'ers don't get it. They're painfully shit with the user interfaces, the tours aren't intuitive to them (but ~30 yr olds cruise through the experiences and show huge engagement with them when they're available). The ability to view a space in fairly high resolution (my best product is 45megapixel 360 panos, so sharp as a motherfucker) tends to give them a feeling of vertigo (but again, not younger user demos) and they prefer lower res products instead because of this.

Facebook was actually the first of the platforms to include support for 360 spherical panos, so I'm not surprised that they started pushing true VR, but I'm surprised how much money Zuck dumped into it and how convinced he was that this was the silver bullet that was going to pivot FB out of it's future issues.

LeafOfFaith said:
It's still a behemoth with IG and Whatsapp, not to mention FB is no slouch either even though it doesn't grab attention of the younger demos.
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I generally agree, but as a publicly traded company it's job is to grow grow grow grow. If someone was to take FB private, it's a viable as fuck business for a long time. But in a growth oriented environment, it's getting shit pumped by TikTok & Youtube.
 
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It’s the right idea for a company that’s goal is to suck up as much of your time as possible. Getting people to hang out, work, go to school on Facebook is the obvious next step. AR/VR is likely a winner in the long run but yeah lots of expensive tech development required and lots of doubters which is a hard for a public company.

and they are feeling the heat.
 
axlsalinger said:
The "old" reputation of Facebook is why they changed the name. And as someone who waited for years for VR, and it's been really underwhelming so far, I just assumed they had advanced the tech to the point where this had a chance to work. If it's really 10 years away then this was an unbelievably poor decision. I'm not convinced it's 10 years away just yet though from at least a passably decent product... But it seems clear it's not ready for prime time yet.
Click to expand...

This is pure opinion, but I'm of the mind that the only way VR is going to work in that type of a way (literally trading in the real world for the virtual for some core life functions) we have to pass the uncanny valley of sorts on reality. Basically, no one wants to feel like they're living in The Sims for hours at a time. But make the experience graphically incredible (textures, lighting, shading, etc) and lifelike...not even truly realistic, but just fucking lifelike and I think enough people will bite on trading in things like zoom for that to make it viable.

But we are years away from graphics being at that level, and enterprise purchased computer hardware being able to run it efficiently.
 
It’s not just VR they are working on. It’s also augmented reality, like what google glasses were trying to do. Which seems like the next step before VR.

but also were too old to really get it. I mean we use message boards.
 
leafman101 said:
I mean we use message boards.
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I will post the link of my youtube rebuttal to this shortly.

It's funny though, there's nothing particularly modern about social media from a concept standpoint. They're all just decentralized multimedia message boards and the one that is actually winning (youtube) is the one that bucks the trend of incentivizing shortform content. Youtube is winning because of long form video content. Who knew that when all this started the winner was going to be a site that if you described it was "imagine if everyone made their own TV shows and shared them with each other....but on the internet"
 
MindzEye said:
This is pure opinion, but I'm of the mind that the only way VR is going to work in that type of a way (literally trading in the real world for the virtual for some core life functions) we have to pass the uncanny valley of sorts on reality. Basically, no one wants to feel like they're living in The Sims for hours at a time. But make the experience graphically incredible (textures, lighting, shading, etc) and lifelike...not even truly realistic, but just fucking lifelike and I think enough people will bite on trading in things like zoom for that to make it viable.

But we are years away from graphics being at that level, and enterprise purchased computer hardware being able to run it efficiently.
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Agreed, we're nowhere near Total VR immersion (tm) but even with current limited tech, well rendered realistic spaces are pretty great. Sims-like cartoony worlds are cool for maybe 90 seconds.

My experience with vr is quite limited to this point (the mediocre Oculus Go and a little bit of PS4). PS is rolling out a "VR2" for the PS5 soon, I'll be interested to see where the tech is at now, although the needs for a video game console are quite different from something like Meta.
 
leafman101 said:
It’s also augmented reality, like what google glasses were trying to do.
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I actually think there's going to be more societal push back on AR than VR. VR is at least opt in. AR is going to be advertisers of the world uniting to force themselves on us at all times in ways that really fuck with how we live. There's some obvious and awesome AR use cases for professionals, but we all know what they're really coming for, and it's not to help architects visualize projects in real time with a pair of glasses, it's to fucking shoot big mac smell in your face at the mall when the algo tells them that you're walking like you're hungry.
 
By the way, if anyone's interested in a cool podcast combining tech and media news with some politics, check out Pivot. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are both really knowledgeable and have good chemistry.

In this episode from Nov. 11, the discussions on FTX and Elon are worth a listen, but stick around for the interview section with Jonathan Haidt about the effect of social media on teens and society. Probably the most interesting interview I've heard this year.

open.spotify.com

Crypto Chaos, Meta Layoffs, Musk Mania, and Guest Jonathan Haidt

Pivot · Episode
open.spotify.com open.spotify.com
 
axlsalinger said:
By the way, if anyone's interested in a cool podcast combining tech and media news with some politics, check out Pivot. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are both really knowledgeable and have good chemistry.

In this episode from Nov. 11, the discussions on FTX and Elon are worth a listen, but stick around for the interview section with Jonathan Haidt about the effect of social media on teens and society. Probably the most interesting interview I've heard this year.

open.spotify.com

Crypto Chaos, Meta Layoffs, Musk Mania, and Guest Jonathan Haidt

Pivot · Episode
open.spotify.com open.spotify.com
Click to expand...

The Dog >
 
am I the only one getting a full blast stream of right wing politicians and transphobia on twitter right now? Oh, you follow a few dozen political reporters who follow Republican congress/surrectionists to do their job? Perhaps you would like to see all of their fucking douche tweets now?

This feels like a few years ago before youtube fixed their algo when you were never further than one click away from being bombarded with a wormhole of conspiracy theory videos and Jordan Peterson.
 
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