Ask HN: Will the F in FAANG still be Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will the F in FAANG still be Facebook?

7 pointspipeline_peak8 comments

When I googled this, I got a ton of popcorn articles on the subject in relation to its parent company now known as Meta. Obviously I don’t care about this, if that required a name change then same goes for when Google adopted Alphabet.

The past two weeks in news, I’ve seen a lot of :

“Facebook has first ever decline in user growth”

“Facebook is chasing TikTok”

“Zuckerberg is turning up the heat”

“Metaverse numbers not as expected”

It’s pretty clear that Facebook is troubled. A lot of analysts predict that the platforms dominance is numbered.

To me and I’m sure others, the big five of FAANG represented the most significant companies not only by highest cultural influence in the tech industry, but highest performing in each sector. Netflix for streaming, Apple for consumer hardware, Facebook social networks, so on so fourth.

I always found Netflix to be questionable, but I’ll stow that aside. What I’m really curious about is why Facebook and for how much longer will it be apart of FAANG? Is it simply because TikTok and Spotify aren’t American companies?

FAANG is an acronym and talked about a lot because those companies seem to never stop growing. It will take a long time for FB to lose dominance. They may be entering a period as a company where the growth has slowed/stopped to the point where its not growth anymore. It will probably take a few quarters to understand if that is the case.

As for the big bet they are taking on Metaverse ... I think it will flop. I don't think AR/VR will catch on beyond gaming. There just isn't practical uses for it for entertainment/social which is where FB/Meta operates. Any new devices are likely going to link to smartphones. Smartphones have become ubiquitous and people treat them as appliances to get things done - shopping, talking/texting, etc. Adding an AR/VR layer to any non-gaming activity someone does with a smartphone will be a gimmick. I just can't see how your average (edit: meaning non-technical) construction worker, lawyer, doctor, grandma, auntie, etc. is going to want to put a device over their eyes to view cat vids, order stuff from Wal-mart, etc.

Bad title but good provocative questions.

They represent the "dream jobs". Similar to how Ivy League is supposed to be the best schools. It's not necessarily precise, but they're all solid engineering culture and top tier pay.

I think in the end, it's a title. Many don't get a FAANG job because it's the best job, you get it to put it on your résumé, then apply for your real ambitions. For some, landing a job at FAANG is the endgame, sort of like winning an Olympic gold medal.

Being a title, there's going to be a lot of questioning on the validity of the title. MindGeek engineers probably deal with the same technical challenges as someone at Netflix, but you don't see people bragging about how they work at MindGeek.

TAANG would be cool, Spotify is not really comparable with these companies IMO.

heads-up; a bit off-topic (although the article I'm going to mention is pretty much on topic).

I came across another acronym through an economist article yesterday[^1]: Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple (MAAMA).

[^1]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/27/the-era-of-big-...

Why Netflix questionable?

It's just a streaming video platform; in no way does it create a technological ecosystem, as the other Big Tech companies do.

"FAANG" was an arbitrary wall street label for bunch of stocks that were producing big returns about a decade ago. Netflix happened to be making a ton of money at the time the term was coined, and Microsoft happened not to be, so we got this weird acronym standing for "big tech" that doesn't represent the companies which actually make up Big Tech.

They aren't 'just' a streaming platform, they are doing a whole load of things that change tech for the better. They've already established what's probably now the standard in video quality measurement with VMAF. They've also set some strong patterns with their work on resilience engineering and their Open Connect platform is changing how many in the industry think about content delivery.

They might not be quite at the scale of Facebook, but they are certainly having an impact on the tech world. They may also be showing that you can have a successful business and not strangely diversify your portfolio just to satisfy the market.

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