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Comment by thesausageking | Hacker News Reader

A different view: they've lost the narrative and this is a way to reset it. Facebook used to be seen positively by users as it connected the world and brought people together. That's no longer the case. There's been scandal after scandal and users now associate Facebook with all of the negative things Facebook has become.

At this point, they can't win the war on changing people's minds on these issues. So, instead, they need a new narrative to build around. They're ditching the Facebook name and branding, and focusing on a new vision around the Metaverse.

It doesn't matter if this is real or not, or if VR/AR doesn't become the next computing paradigm. The narrative itself is a new, interesting thread to build their brand around.

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>They're ditching the Facebook name and branding, and focusing on a new vision around the Metaverse.

I doubt they are ditching it, and instead just abstracting the ownership chain one degree with a holding company and installing a straw man to blame. Watch him copy Larry and Sergei's moves, he may one day realize he held on too long and became something hard to un-become: infamous.

Idk if it's that hard when your that rich. Bill gates did it.

It only took quitting and giving away all his money.

... to his own foundation, which he controls the money of. He even manages the Gates foundation investment decisions. Oh, to be rich enough to fund my own foundation for tax and PR purposes!

Agree with this. To add, I think they initially tried to rebrand as a privacy/security-first company but that, IMO, failed because they didn’t commit to being a radically transparent company. Now they are trying to rebrand as something bigger.

I still think they should just take a leap of faith and become radically transparent.

> It doesn't matter if this is real or not,

In a way it does; because if it is widely perceived as phony and yet another distracting ploy, then it much less chance of actually changing the narrative around the reputation of "the company formerly known as FaceBook". In fact, further "sleight of hand" manoeuvres would fortify the dodgy reputation.

They need to convince people to buy into, but the technology itself doesn't need to be real. Not in the 5 year time frame.

Tesla's self-driving product is a great example of this. They got consumers to buy into the vision of self-driving cars way before it was actually ready. This allowed them to sell a lot more cars and pre-orders as well as have a narrative for investors to pump their stock. If they get FSD to work, it will be great. But, even if it never is a successful product, they've benefitted tremendously from the narrative itself and have been able to turn it into sales and cheap capital to invest in the business.

> They need to convince people to buy into, but the technology itself doesn't need to be real.

Maybe. But on the other hand, Tesla was starting out with a _lot_ more user goodwill than FaceBook.

Tesla isn't perfect, they have (IMHO) a good basic product, but with some build quality issues, labour issues, over-promising self-driving issues etc, and yet ... these issues have not shifted the narrative from basically favourable. Part of me still wants one, even though I know it's not going to drive itself. Maybe narratives are sticky?

So, FaceBook is going into this with a massively negative narrative. Shifting it will be hard. We're all really cynical about FaceBook already.

> users now associate Facebook with all of the negative things Facebook has become.

who are these users you are writing of?

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