This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Why?
Everything successful fb has done in more than a decade is copying or acquiring competitors.
Zuck has spent a few years setting $36,000,000,000 on fire building secondlife2, that nobody wants. The stock is down 25% in the last 2 years.
facebook is like google, both are advertising companies at their core. They both leveraged one idea to serve adds really well and have failed to produce anything new in house since.
Calling it verified is the only problem for a paid service. Name it Premium, +, anything else that implies a value added experience. But pay for verification is stupid.
Thank you. The verified word is the sticking point. If you're not honest, people won't believe you -- oddly enough.
Why?
Everything successful fb has done in more than a decade is copying or acquiring competitors.
Fair and accurate.
Zuck has spent a few years setting $36,000,000,000 on fire building secondlife2, that nobody wants.
Despite everyone wanting them to fail, this is inaccurate. They've sold as much Quest hardware as Microsoft sells Xboxes in the same time period, and those cost figures include hardware, and ALL their VR software, across multiple different games and apps. They did not spend that much on Horizon Worlds which is their failed second life clone.
facebook is like google, both are advertising companies at their core. They both leveraged one idea to serve adds really well and have failed to produce anything new in house since.
Again, fair and accurate, though missing the mechanism for how this occurs. Because they're advertising companies, they're great at tracking users and prioritizing market research. This is what makes them great at copying stuff, because they're very very good at using market research and user data to determine which are the features actually worth copying.
Despite everyone wanting them to fail, this is inaccurate. They've sold as much Quest hardware as Microsoft sells Xboxes in the same time period, and those cost figures include hardware, and ALL their VR software, across multiple different games and apps. They did not spend that much on Horizon Worlds which is their failed second life clone.
Neither Microsoft or Facebook are making relevant money from hardware. All of those headsets (like all those xboxes) have only one purpose: selling software, which the platform owner takes a cut from.
Incidentally: from 2021 to 2022 reality labs both sold less hardware and less software, while growing their costs, probably due to research and development and preproduction for both Quest Pro - which is cancelled already - and Quest 3. Let’s wait and see, what Quest 3 is getting Facebook, but currently reality labs is failing, no matter how much I personally want them to, as well.
Neither Microsoft or Facebook are making relevant money from hardware. All of those headsets (like all those xboxes) have only one purpose: selling software, which the platform owner takes a cut from.
Except that the main point I'm refuting isn't whether or not they're profitable, but whether or not people want them. The hardware sales clearly show that they are desired products.
From a profit and loss standpoint they may be failing, or they may just still be early days of investment and expected operating at a loss. Xbox lost Microsoft money for years before it made them any real money. It doesn't hurt to diversify your revenue sources.
Yes, Oculus has sold a lot of headsets.
Until they both lose money and users measurably from these changes, they will copy one another to chase every last cent.
Very good.
Elon managing to collect monthly fee for basically a jpeg, is definitely not worst of his business moves.
I dunno, it delegitimised the usefulness of Twitter somewhat. Now you can't be certain that the NASA account that announces an apocalyptic asteroid is real or not.
Long term effects are really of no concern for modern CEOs, that's not exclusive to Elon that is modus operandi.
What is they are "verifying"? That the account holder had 12 or 15 bucks to throw away?
The way it was meant to be, when social media started doing that, is that it verifies your identity. You use your real name (or stage name, or business name) in the account, and they "verify" it actually belongs to you and not an impostor.
Now instead, it verifies that you paid the fee, and your account name could be Napoleon Bonaparte for what they care.
Meta promised more exposure for my small business posts, didn’t deliver.
are tech companies doing this now-paid-but-was-free-for-a-long-time service because they know their company is failing (or soon to fail), so they are trying to accumulate as much money as they can before sh*t hits the fan?
A lot of social media companies aren't profitable, but they didn't care because of cheap loans and lots of investors. Now that loans are more ecpensive and investors want AI, social media companies are realizing, "We need to make money, or investors will hate us", and are locking things down. Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and Tumblr are some of the examples we see. All trying to push subscriptions or block adblockers.
I am not an economist, but I have an idea that this is because the alternatives have done that too, and since this renders the point of moving invalid, they might as well also introduce the same stuff
Does anyone remember being around people, when you were a kid, that awarded you behavioral stickers that are holographic and had various shapes like stars or animals?
This is exactly what this stupid verification thing is about. OoOOOoO, I'm so special that I got a fucking checkmark next to my name and I actually spend money that could've gone to something else worthwhile just to keep it! /s
I feel like we're in a world where all of these companies are fronted by childish adults that treat all of their userbases like these kinds of kids. But they pretend that they're adults because they do business things.
For the same price as an entire TV subscription where you can watch hundreds of shows and movies, all month if you'd like, would you like to have a few pixels change next to your name and have your experience be almost entirely the exact same as it is for free?
These people are out of touch
People on Threads are still delusioned that it's different from Twitter lol
Mistakes? The premium was one of the best choices Musk made. Everyone kept using it and it allowed him to just extract wealth from people for no consequences. Why wouldn't other companies follow suit?
Am I reading that right? It will cost an extra $4 to register the check mark on mobile devices compared to desktop?
Does that mean you only get the benefits on mobile if you pay the extra $ or does it mean you can pay either way but charging on mobile has a $4 convenience fee?
It covers Apple/Google tax. They didn't want to have lower revenue on mobile or go the Spotify route.
I was also surprised that you will need to verify all your accounts. If you run 3 social media accounts across Instagram or Facebook, you can buy a blue tick for each, even though you run them all from your (maybe) verified account
"available later this week" and they didn't even bother including the price in the local currencies?
Personally, they are the same sort of trash ever since I realise I can’t access its content from a web browser and I have to download the app with an account, so from the start.
I mean, shows how these people think. You should pay for everything, even the natural stuff like identity.
Of course, if people are willing to pay, well...
It'd be one thing if they were adding any more value or removing their marketing surveillance, but paying this much per month for a blue check mark is just bonkers.
I can understand why they are doing this, the programming require to roll out a feature like this is minimal, so even if they barely profit from it, if at all, they didn't spend a lot of time on doing this feature, so, expect other platforms to soon follow.
