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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

I’m shocked meta didn’t pivot more into “lifestyle”. I mean something like meetup, a superior marketplace for selling (no, not Facebook marketplace).

There are a lot of cool things you could build on top of a verified identity.

Even if VR and AR pan out I doubt apple would lose. They just have too much control over the entire stack.

How Microsoft and Google, and Meta allowed Apple to slowly build over independent control of their entire ecosystem, from supply chain to software is baffling. They’re gonna get wrecked.

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I'm also surprised that they haven't focused more on giving businesses tools to communicate and sell to customers better through WhatsApp and Instagram. Whatsapp is the de-facto communication tool in India and LatAm from experience. Instagram is the de-facto discovery and social tool in India.

Yet from a business' perspective, the experience is really poor. Most have to rely on third party tools to sell and chat with customers.

I agree with all the above. Nothing to do with the username, either.

isn't that a casualty of the US-centric/SF-centric view of the world?

Meta thinks about foreign market share constantly, it’s a primary reason why they purchased WhatsApp in the first place.

The failure to capitalize on their userbase with accessory businesses probably has more to do with the VC/Silicon Valley obsession with the hot new thing and what they hope will be the next new hot thing. Commerce is boring, TikTok and VR platforms are much more exciting.

Whatsapp partnered with JioMart to place orders through the app in India: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/08/shop-on-whatsapp-with-jiom...

Progress is being made on this front, albeit slowly.

FB messenger too.

They did seem to make a push for more business API and more marketing messaging permissions. I invested some time in developing it for political campaigns.

Only for them to yank the more open permissions away.

> Whatsapp is the de-facto communication tool in India and LatAm from experience

And much of Europe.

> mean something like meetup, a superior marketplace for selling

They've tried these things - you mentioned an example of one yourself.

Very poor execution, and from what I hear it’s a glorified side project internally. Not a serious initiative.

> a superior marketplace for selling

They're trying this in India through WhatsApp by patterning with Reliance.

https://about.fb.com/news/2022/08/shop-on-whatsapp-with-jiom...

> Even if VR and AR pan out I doubt apple would lose

Apple won't lose but equally they won't dominate.

There will be a space for an open, collaborative market leader exactly what Meta is positioning for with their recent partnerships e.g. Microsoft.

And if you ignore the metaverse nonsense and extrapolate hardware advances over the next few decades AR/VR could be compelling. It could replace laptops. It could change what travel, concerts, arts events looks like. It could democratise education.

I understand Meta is trying to generate hype and attract talent but I also hope that we do get far more serious at what AR/VR could mean.

Who’s going to create the hardware at scale that is good enough? Microsoft’s ARM laptops are so bad that it’s faster to run Windows for ARM on Mx based Macs in a VM than on an MS laptop

> How Microsoft and Google, and Meta allowed Apple to slowly build over independent control of their entire ecosystem, from supply chain to software is baffling.

Google didn't. They built Android and Chrome and ChromeOS to counter that issue and frankly it's been widely successful.

Microsoft tried (but failed) with Windows Phone.

Google doesn’t have their own supply chain and only relatively recently begin making their own phones. And due to their licensing model the hardware and software are not nearly as optimized for one another as iOS and iPhones

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