Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name
theverge.com
theverge.com
Facebook is way too large and does too many things today to be called just Facebook
Google's rebranding to Alphabet also feels semi-successful. Technically Fitbit is a Google's sister company under the Alphabet umbrella, but all the news I've seen reported it as "Google acquires Fitbit". I only see the Alphabet name when I read about earnings reports and their stock value, and even then it's always introduced as "Alphabet, the Google parent company"
In 2011, they went a step further and changed their name again to 'Academi', which is pretty funny.
Snap - this one worked, but I think partially because it's a name drop, rather than a full rebranding. I think it has higher chance to be successful (like "Apple Computers" -> "Apple" or "GrabTaxi" -> "Grab"), because it expands on the current brand instead of trying to be something different. I think if Snapchat rebranded to "Spectacle" or "CamCom" or something different, we'd still be reading "previously known as Snapchat" for years to come
Alphabet is a holding company, nothing more.
It's also insulting your customers when communicating that (a) there's more value after a rebrand when there's obviously none; and (b) customer is dumb or shallow enough to be swayed by messaging and not the product.
I have felt FB has needed to offer a privacy focused social network for some time. Apple is quietly proving people are willing to pay for privacy-enabled social features.
My question is whether they will collaborate with Epic / Fortnite on this. I suspect they will need to in order to take on whatever ends up dominating the App Store Apple's eventual hardware platform.
Facebook does not have a game engine and it is not currently a 3D-first company, and it makes sense that it will need one to underpin all of the content that will need to be made for the metaverse, by creators.
Facebook will never be successful onboarding FB users, their graphs and the whole messed up biz model into something of their own.
Epic has the upper hand. I think that company could continue without FB but see no evidence FB or rather Facebook’s new parent company, can build out a metaverse product with brain worm as successful as Fortnite.
Even if FB had churned out successful original gaming ideas it would be a long shot. Fortnite has crushed that hard.
From 2013: https://andrewchen.com/why-developers-are-leaving-the-facebo...
They're doing it *so that* it integrates with social graph AND is another advertising channel.
Edit: fix typo
Or as an homage to Orwell: Faceboot.
They could always go back to their Facemash roots.
Or acquire the rights to Skynet.
The lack of focus at Facebook is reminding me of Yahoo and AOL and their gradual refusal to evolve their core product, instead expanding into a multitude of side-products, and slowly moving out of relevance.
This alarmism (or optimism) hardly ever pays off, but I wonder what the social media landscape and accompanying 'metaverse' will look like ten years from now, and how Facebook will fit into it, if at all.
I get some aspects of VR, like gaming or the increasing trend to use virtual displays for productivity (stacking 2D windows). But accessing this space seems to be complicated even years ahead - the only way is to wear large, vision-blocking eyewear, or at least display a full-screen application that takes the user out of context. You can add in cameras and virtual 2D desktops to help, but it's an all-encompassing experience where getting in and out is a major, reorienting move. This is appealing for an ad company (100% eyeball control must be immensely valuable) or maybe for some mental needs ("escape reality") but I see this problematic and hard to integrate into society and the human experience.
I would browse it and find a fair number of people meeting up and playing games.
But, I also found a lot of people just hanging out too. Shopping, occupying spaces and talking about stuff. The stay home spouse talking shit about their partner to a friend was pretty common too.
The VR bit you wrote resonates with me. I have similar questions. But the idea of a 3D space itself works for plenty of people.
See also: Comcast → Xfinity
Cosmic rays routinely flip bits in browsers' memories at the moment of request, causing the URL to change by one symbol.
To defend against this, big companies typically register a bunch of domains that are slight mutations of their primary business (redirecting to it).
As you say, the results are surprising. I have worked very hard to remove tech from my personal and social life as much as possible.
Edit: youtube is the worst for this. I know perfectly well that 99% of youtube videos could be summarised in a few sentences, yet still find myself watching endless rubbish.
edit: I see a bright future for Oculus if it's marketed and shaped as a faceboot. /s it would look something like this: https://i.imgflip.com/2y3xdw.jpg
That's because we already have it today with the web, but it's primarily based on a flat 2D model. WebGPU, WebXR, and WebAssembly are going to replace the photo, text, and video sites you use currently into 3D spatial ones that you can experience and live in. We'll have the ability to shop in virtual storefronts both for our avatars and for real life goods, chat with others in whatever environment we want with customizable surroundings, and of course browse worlds created by others with easy to use tools.
This is the vision my team at Wonder is building, so that any game engine can export complex spatial content to the browser, at near native performance. The web is powerful because it's cross-platform by default, and it "just works everywhere".
No 30% from walled gardens either!
Link to our Discord if you want to learn more or join us:
Prove it. Great claims demand great evidence.
Bubbly startup pitch: “… WebGPU, WebXR, and WebAssembly are going to replace the photo, text, and video sites you use currently into 3D spatial ones that you can experience and live in...”
My reaction: “Aw, hell no! The flip to video was bad enough! Leave text alone!”