I feel bad for the ppl losing their jobs but that is a very generous severance package.
Meta really needs to be in the cloud business.
The problem is that the way Meta runs its data centers and software stack is tightly integrated with the products. It’s not really amenable to running third party applications or storing third party data.
I'm not sure cloud is actually such a great thing for FB but if you're going to do it, that's an inevitable step, isn't it?
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-...
If they have their own data centers (which I assume they do), this would make a lot of sense, kinda like a ghost kitchen — a virtual data center. That is, assuming they have the physical space to support something like this. It would be a way to diversify income with largely existing resources and vendor contracts.
Imagine even a slimmed down service like fly.io or Cloudflare workers running at FB data center scale.
It could certainly work. But it would probably be too small a business for a company as large as Meta. The differences in scales is (I think) one of their problems. At Meta scale (somewhat a pun), many things are just harder/not worthwhile because of their size.
Another of the big boys offering a cloud product would guarantee it would pick up customers and give them another avenue they can plausibly hunt for competitive advantage in.
I agree that spinning up a pure-play public cloud makes no sense for Meta. Its not in their ethos, moreover selling various abstractions over virtualized compute is a commodity. Why would they get in line, behind IBM and Oracle?
Given that Office 365 is being counted as 'Cloud' imagine what Meta could do with some $100/yr SMB service. On the enterprise end, they have some of the very best big data and ML infra and could do well to bundle up extra capacity sell that on a metered basis. If they had started offering managed Presto in 2015 this conversation wouldn't be happening.
Their network infra (IP space, undersea cables, edge pops etc) is also rather vast and I could see a lot of SMB to F500 customers lining up to leverage it if bundled right. If they wanted to they could write a check for CloudFlare, I checked their balance sheet. Meta Cloudflare would be a juggernaut; so powerful that I pray the FTC wouldn't allow it.
Historically Facebook has been allergic to B2B outside of selling ads. Even within it they bought and killed Atlas, effectively handing a monopoly on ad serving to Doubleclick. Now they are warming up to it, offering Workplace, Kustomer, and Oculus for enterprise. I think that the Metaverse could be a novel B2B play and so do they, calling it "The Future of Work".
tl;dr: Meta could win the cloud business because it has the people, cash, differentiated tech, and existing relationships. They could beat AWS/GCP/Azure in many segments of IT spend by packaging their assets together into a novel kind of cloud.
Why would there be any issue from an FTC standpoint? As far as I can tell, they're in completely separate businesses. I do agree it is a brilliant idea to Microsoft-ize the SMB relationships they already have to sell software services.
Doubling down on becoming one of these "everything" apps could have been a good strategy. Become the app frontend for one of the less big food delivery companies in the FB app, tie in to payments. Perhaps even buy Square for Cash App and all the POS integrations to build a network of sellers, all tightly integrated from the consumer perspective into the Facebook app. I'd have hated it, but I suspect it could have worked.
I agree that it would have been a good strategy, but that's (presumably) why they never did it.
That food looks good, imagine if they partnered with Uber or Grab so you can add to cart right below the picture.
Peer to Peer payments could have also been great, especially if you could check-out at a store by scanning a QR code to pay (think WeChat Pay, FairPrice in Singapore, or even Paypal's version of that).
Or even buying event tickets. They already have events on the platform, and they let you put targeted ads, but what about an integrated experience to purchase tickets right on the platform instead of there being an external link?
They could have done so much but the only major change/addition in recent years was Dating (a huge hit in countries that perceive Tinder as only for hookups) and those avatars that people use everywhere instead of text posts.
He also started SpaceX with Falcon 1, not Falcon 9, and certainly not Starship.
I still think Facebook is evil and I feel like they should have tried to buy Tik Tok although I don't know how feasible that ever was.
>Meta really needs to be in the cloud business.
That's an interesting idea.
That's a crazy idea, if original. What do Facebook know about building and selling general cloud services?
Besides, Google is trying 50 different things but it didn't go full throttle on any idea like FB did for Metaverse. Huge difference.
You can't possibly know that. Try not to get caught up in your own speculation and speculation from pundits.
They could’ve been “the login for the social internet”… they even built that platform! They just were so paranoid about losing control of the graph they shut it all down. Twitter also failed on the developer/platform front for the same reason.
They could’ve been the identity platform for every hot startup in the last 10 years. They could’ve courted developers such that every platform add-on they did got immediate head start… like ads! They could’ve out-AdSensed Adsense.
Anyway, I’m sure that’s all terrible business strategy, but it’s what I wish they had done. Even though I’d probably be cursing their name now if they owned all of our logins.
There is no Twitter meltdown. Before Musk it was already in grave financial trouble and would have made 800m$ cuts anyway. Musk most certainly is clumsy in his actions and communications, but Twitter isn't going anywhere.
Likewise, Facebook isn't having a meltdown either. There's a dent in ad spent against a backdrop of 2 years of dramatic overhiring (same as Google, Stripe).
There's a 4% decline in revenue on a 27 billion quarterly revenue. Meltdown? There's a handful of companies on this planet being this profitable.
I'd like to use a common Dutch expression to explain the Twitter situation: "the soup isn't eaten as hot as it is served".
Musk wants absolute free speech but that's just a random interview quote, not the actual plan for Twitter. Users are abandoning the service in droves. No, they are not. A handful of advertisers stop spending (conveniently part of an economic downturn) but that doesn't mean the vast majority do, or do so indefinitely. Twitter is an awful place now, whilst he hasn't implemented a single change yet. Checkmarks will get decimated whilst his original unhinged idea is already dialed back.
Everybody's jumping on all kinds of hysterical projections that are not supported by the facts. There is no meltdown.
November 7th: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589784134691741696
The questions are: can they monetize that, and will it continue? But as far as twitter dying, the opposite is currently true. It's never been more alive.
Huh?. Meta's growth has slowed, but they are a money printing machine. Earnings have gone down because of the enormous bet Zuck has made on the metaverse.
Twitter has been barely scraping by for years. The two companies are not really even comparable.
This has severely hurt Meta's ad revenue, i.e., earnings.
The metaverse stuff is a bad bet, you are correct, but is not likely impacting earnings in any significant way.
> company’s rising costs and expenses, which jumped 19% year over year to $22.1 billion during the quarter.
> Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which is responsible for developing the virtual reality and related augmented reality technology that underpins the yet-to-be built metaverse, has lost $9.4 billion so far in 2022.
The effects from the Apple changes are mostly in the rear view mirror at this point. You could attributed a 4% revenue hit to them, but those can also be attributed to a general slowing economy.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/26/meta-plans-to-lose-even-more...
FB was a money printing machine, but they trashed it.
> "We continue to anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year,"
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meta-lowers-expense-foreca...
Everyone wants to dance on Meta's grave, but it's way too soon. Yes, the Apple change gave them a top line haircut, but if the RL spend is excluded, they are making a ton of money. I'd also argue that the real headwinds are the general economy and TikTok.
Right, and not Apple's actions.
Musk is following the standard playbook of private equity takeover + gutting the company to squeeze out remaining profits and then sell for parts. There is no question of even a bit of emotion involved from his side.