Könnt Ihr euch erinnern, dass Social Media mal schön war?
Nein?
Gut, ich auch nicht.
Das Gefühl besteht schon länger. Facebook war schon länger nicht mehr spannend, am längsten hat Twitter gehalten. Schon mit dem Kauf von Whatsapp und allerspätestens mit Instagram ist bei Facebook klar gewesen, worum es geht: Daten von Benutzern zu erfassen. Irgendwo dazwischen gab es „The Circle“ von Dave Eggers, einem Roman in dem eine Exfreundin einen Digitalverweigerer für Ihren Job in den Untergang treibt. Ja, lustig.
Seit der Um-firmierung zu „Meta Inc.“ ist dann auch die letzte Liebe zur Digitalisierungserfolgsgeschichte verfolgen gewesen – der Auftrag, das Mandat ist verloren gegangen, aller Beteuerungen ein sozialeres Netzwerk schaffen zu wollen zum trotz, Meta ist nun ein Konzern geworden, der eine Zukunft braucht. Die Kunden sind dafür unerheblich geworden.
Jenseits der privaten Kanäle von Whatsapp und der Wohlfühltapete von Instagram aus der man seinen Content auch nicht so richtig wieder rauskriegt, ist Corporate Social Media nun auch kein Thema mehr. Das Facebook-Konto ist, nach jaherlangem Ignorieren, nun endlich gelöscht, der Twitter-Client nicht mehr auf dem Telefon. Mastodon läuft schon irgendwie.
We know Facebook has big plans for the Metaverse. The company even rebranded as Meta to underline it’s ambition. On Labstalk, we almost spent the entire season discussing benefits and goals of the technology, alongside with all the other tech topics in the same space, like Web3, NFTs and DOAs.
Back to Meta (the company) and the Metaverse: among others, one of the foundational use-cases the company re-imagines – to make it attractive to the promising B2B market: virtual or remote meetings.
And if you ever get to see any of the promotional images: At first glance, these that really look like a meeting in a 3D Room can be a viable alternative. In the pandemic the corporate workforce first came from plenty of travel and got force-used to Zoom and Teams meetings, only to develop even worse meeting fatigue because in-person required travel. Now after almost three years of pandemic, the audience is eager for something new and the time seems right for a different format.
Alone: the hype doesn’t materialise.
Parmy Olson from Bloomberg reports that Accenture, among other companies that are reference customers to Facebook/Meta’s Occulus platform, bought plenty of gear, 60k devices, some as long as 2 years ago. To use these devices for new hire orientation. AstraZeneca, another major customer, wouldn’t even comment.
The virtual conference room needs to die. VR is better used for fun and building relationships.
A major reason for the lack of momentum I can confirm from own experiences is the bad reputation Facebook/Meta has for their perspectives on privacy and handling of sensitive data. The ‘surveillance capitalism’ approach the company takes with this new technology and economy bet becomes apparent in the pricing strategy for these Occulus devices. The Facebook/Meta (or ‘surveillance’)-free version of the device, that appears technically identical, is about 30% more expensive, according to sources in well informed circles.
Personally, I believe in the concept but can re-affirm these concerns and understand the restraints that come alongside the curiosity. While the investments that Meta makes in the technology help the hardware make necessary progress towards user-acceptance, other players need to step in and provide applications to help solve corporate acceptance.
We all remember how Facebook acquired Instagram for a whole billion of Dollars. An incredible amount for a Internet Service at the time it happened. Of course the event was debated controversial. Still, it is one of the biggest success stories of Big Tech.
Facebook Logo
Instagram is a photo service in a sea of other photo services. Photography has been around on the web in meaningful ways for a long time. Flickr lost out to Facebook in the community stakes, and Instagram is doing great in whatever-the-fuck market it’s in (the share-to-my-twitter-followers market?), but this is not Google acquiring YouTube. Bookmark this comment. See you in 2022.
Hacker News Summary of the Facebook acquisition of Instagram.
Well, here we are. Ten years later, in 2022. That didn’t age well.
Seeing Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms to allow users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion is one of the most dystopian news of the past months. The company has been criticised for fueling hatred and hate speech, even with previous policies.
Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.
Facebook complains how Apple’s approach to privacy in iOS will have a substantial impact to their revenue. Following their own statement the impact will be as high as $10 billion for the current year. Facebook’s business model is widely perceived as being based on violating privacy.
Apple’s privacy feature disrupts the behind-the-scenes mechanics of many mobile ads, especially those that confirm whether a purchase or download was made.
As advertised by Apple. The company introduced a feature called “App tracking transparency”, that defaults to “do not allow tracking” as of version 14.5, that was released earlier this year. The feature allows device-owners to control which apps can track user behaviour across multiple websites.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8w4qPUSG17Y
Apple App Tracking Transparency Ad
Reality is more complex, as always, but it’s still a great ad.
Signal, the company offering secure and private messaging, tried to advertise on Facebook. Naturally, the company tried to drive their value in privacy. They chose to point out the implications Facebook’s businesmodel has for these values.
Facebook arbeitet an einer KI, die automatisch Code von einer Programmiersprache in eine andere übersetzen kann. Das Feld ist nicht gänzlich neu, es gab schon Versuche, KI zu verwenden um beispielsweise statische Analyse und damit Code-Qualität zu verbessern. Wenn eine Maschine zwischen Code übersetzen kann, werden eine ganze Reihe von Banken jubeln, endlich nicht mehr auf unersetzbare, uralte Cobol Programmierer angewiesen zu sein, die auch noch unfassbare Stundensätze aufrufen.
Es ist eine Gelegenheit, schwierigere Probleme anzugehen.
Facebook threatens to stop operations in EU: Not so sure I’d understand it as a threat, if Facebook ceased operations in Europe. Me personally would’ve kicked the information sucking service and timesink to the youth out a while ago. Latest, when it became clear that Facebook is a pool of hatespeak, that nobody can or wants to control, the time should’ve been over.
However, that’s exactly what they threaten the European Union with. The debate and negotiation started over the ability to transfer personal identifiable information over the Atlantic, to the US.
Most likely, I’d suspect, EU regulators will fall for the attack and back down.
