Wa many complaints on Facebook, someone comes in constantly: It’s too big. This is why some critics and regulators want to slow down by forcing Mark Zuckerberg to address big issues, such as Instagram.
Zuckerberg’s answer: Let’s grow by buying More things.
After a brief hiatus in 2018, the year the Cambridge Analytica collapse began, Facebook has been making a lot of progress – at least 21 in the last three years, on the Pitchbook of data.
Much has been announced since December 2020, when the US government filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it violates the rules of the Internet by purchasing or violating its competitors. The first garment is a reconfigured complaint Its purpose is to force Facebook to leave Instagram and WhatsApp.
In the last few years, Facebook’s interest in marketing has been steadily rising Giphy, which gives you the opportunity to post funny GIFs on your social media site, that Customers, a Facebook client software company. Most of them, however, have been settled in one area: the game and the real reality. Which makes sense, since Zuckerberg declared the game a real reality, incorporated into a more comprehensive and difficult-to-interpret rubric of “metaverse, ”Is the future of Facebook.
As a result, the company name changes to Meta. But most important is the promise that Facebook will relocate thousands of employees, and it plans to lose $ 10 billion this year alone, and much more. “for the next several years. ”
The next day Facebook announced a name change, the company announced how it would use some of the funds: a deal to buy Inside, a company founded by VR pioneer Chris Milk, best known Spirituality exercise program. People familiar with the project say that Facebook paid over $ 500 million to the company.
Some of the Metaverse-y products announced this year include Unit 2 games, which forms the so-called “integrated game platform” Crayta; Bigbox VR, which makes the popular Facebook game Oculus VR glasses; and Interactive Rainforest, the creator of another VR game.
Those covenants were after lifting the eyebrows Before Facebook announced that it represented the future of the company. So what should we think of them now?
That is: If you think 2021 Facebook needs to be broken, among other things to change what has already happened like Instagram ($ 1 billion, 2012) and WhatsApp ($ 19 billion, 2014), then you no longer have to worry about what Zuckerberg did. is he doing now to build his 2031 brand for his company?
A Facebook representative was happy to explain to me the difference: Unlike a social networking site a decade ago, Facebook is not a leader in real-world / real-world / name-calling – many large, high-profile companies spend a lot of money. time and money on it. And, as he did his best to explain, Zuckerberg is contemplating a future in which Facebook will be one of the few companies in the metaverse.
Here are the words that the company provided to Recode to explain this point:
“Investing and building what consumers want is the key to success. We cannot create metaverse ourselves – collaboration with manufacturers, manufacturers, and professionals will be crucial. As we sell products, we know we are facing stiff competition from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Snap , Sony, Roblox, Epic, and many more on each occasion. “
Translation: Recently, Facebook is happy that Snap tries to sell glasses who take videos and connect them to your phone because they are competitors Facebook Glasses which captures videos and connects them to your phone. And Facebook will be happy again next year, when It looks like Apple will soon have an event where the manufacturer will show off its actual headphones, because it will compete with Oculus Facebook headphones.
But it is also hard to imagine that Facebook expects Apple, Snap, and anyone else to be a strong competitor forever. One of the main reasons Zuckerberg is interested in metaverse, after all, I think would give him a way to directly communicate with his customers without relying on Apple and the Google duopoly phone.
Facebook’s presence also highlights the challenges that antitrust managers face in dealing with a fast-moving and unpredictable business. Even the most brutal of these beliefs, which we have seen over the past few years, are designed to go back and forth to correct mistaken ideas.
Or they look at the present, as a a given order which could prevent major platforms like Facebook from making major in the industry itself now rule.
So how do you look at the future and think that Facebook – not Google or Epic Games or Roblox or the originals you have never heard of – can control events? Especially when the metaverse does not exist, perhaps it will not exist, or it may exist in a way very different from Zuckerberg, that science fiction writers, and professional scholars and investors think it will end today?
I have asked the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that is suing Facebook for its Instagram and WhatsApp accounts, what it thinks about Facebook interests and purchases, but I do not expect to hear – among other things because the agency does not want to. talking about Facebook during a long battle with Facebook, and because they probably don’t know what they’re thinking.
Here I must say that the government should not win lawsuits or impose a law to reduce or restrict Facebook’s interests. Some professional advertisers I have mentioned believe that Facebook is – for a time, at least – out of the market for social media content, because there is so much scrutiny and complexity.
“It just seems like it will be very difficult for Facebook to get everything on social media,” says a businessman who has sold companies to Facebook in the past.
And that can work not only on getting bigger tickets, but also on smaller “lots” – selling heavy companies that have just set out to bring their engineers and other employees to Facebook pay.
Washington has already indicated that it intends to focus on minor issues: In September, the The FTC has released an analysis of the 616 developments made by Facebook, Google, and other major technology companies over the past decade that were not large enough to trigger oversight.
But the presence of the report makes regulators think they need to look at more, not less. FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter also stated emphatically: “I think buying things as a Pac-Man approach,” he said after the report was released. “Any integration that is seen on its own may not seem like a big deal, but the impact of hundreds of small things can make people feel more confident.”
You could argue if Facebook is the dominant force on social media these days – the company is delighted to announce the immediate success of TikTok to say no. But there is no question about his great wealth and power. The real question is: Will we allow these things to happen in the future?