FB went all in on Metaverse reminded me of Google between 2007-2012 when they mobilized the whole company and invested heavily around social with OpenSocial, Google Circle etc. Google eventually realized that's not their core strength and moved on, let's see what will FB do.
Problem with Facebook is that they can’t acquire anyone due to their notoriety. They should have been able to use all the cash generated in the past five years to purchase a bunch of assets like Microsoft. At the end of the day, they have a bad branding problem. Need a fresh start with new management which we know is never going to happen.
The actual earnings report from the company itself:<p><a href="https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/FB-12.31.2021-Exhibit-99.1-Final.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4...</a>
Amusingly most analysts had Facebook as a buy: <a href="https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1488997491693469697" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1488997491693469697</a>
I rarely use Facebook, but recently got into ebikes and it seems the best communities are using Facebook Groups, so I've been using FB more in the past month than in the past decade.<p>It's awful.<p>Rather than just showing me a chronological feed of new group posts, Facebook wants to control the stream so they can 1) monetize it with ads and 2) increase engagement by suggesting other content. And they're so devious about it - the first half dozen posts in your feed are from your subs, but then Facebook starts to slip in recommended content in the middle of your subs.<p>Amusingly, because I've got ad blocking at various levels (browser and DNS), Facebook's systems apparently have no idea of my preferences or even my general profile or demographic. If an ad does sneak through because it's served off a non-blacklisted server, it's always completely irrelevant and many times offensive: Meeting singles, anything MAGA, essential oils, etc. The group recommendations and inserted posts are random as it gets: Spider-Man Fans, Kittens, Dallas Cowboys, Love Quotes, Old School Hip-hop, Soup Lovers, and more. (These are real suggestions I just pulled right now).<p>What's amazing about this is that Facebook <i>has</i> all my info. It knows where I live, how old I am, what topics I've explicitly chosen to follow. And yet it ignores all that and relies on data gathered from spying on you instead.<p>Add to this the fact that scrolling for any amount of time through my groups will 100% crash the tab in Chrome on my Android tablet. 100% of the time. This is all Facebook is! How can their development be so bad for their basic functionality? Because they hate the open web and want you to use their app, which I refuse to do.<p>Facebook's number one priority before anything else is monetization. Any feature or setting which may be beneficial to the end user is secondary.<p>- Why can't I pay money and turn off ads?<p>- Why can't I set my feeds to chronological order
permanently?<p>- Why can't I turn off suggested content?<p>- Why aren't my profile information and interests I explicitly entered respected?<p>- Why can't I filter my feed to strip out any news items and only see updates and photos?<p>- Why does Facebook's web app crash so much doing basic scrolling?<p>I've been amazed for over a decade at Facebook's continued growth. But my son and his friends never use it, so I think like all social networks, it will soon go away. Another 10 years and they might literally have more deceased users than active ones.