The Future State Of Meta Aka Facebook
Why Facebook is moving to Meta and its quest to the Metaverse
Hello and welcome back to the future state podcast.
Nick and I are back from the mini-break and started Season 3 of The Future State.
WTAF is Meta 👀
Nick and I go deep and long on the Facebook rebrand, their history, their issues, their opportunity and the way they will be potentially shaping a future for the next four generations.
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The Podcast Breakdown 🎧
Nick and Danny dive into the Meta brand, the Facebook rebrand that has a wave of memes (here is the Iceland Tourism example, the PR machine created quite a buzz but as many questions trying to understand what it means.
I take you through the history of the brand, the reason why its journey is so important and why the fights and bets made by Facebook’s leadership team have led to one of the biggest rebrands in history.
I answer Nick’s question of why the rebrand was so important and the other potential it had
Important notes: You have 4 master brand types you can:
(1) Monolithic (FedEx),
(2) Endorsed (Virgin),
(3) Free-standing (Unilever with dove, wall's etc),
(4) Hybrid (Coca-cola company, coca-cola - diet coke - coke zero + sprite, Fanta etc)
So What is Meta?
Group of businesses - Facebook (big blue), Instagram, WhatsApp, - VR and experimental
Money making (Facebook app, Instagram) vs money-losing (WhatsApp, VR, metaverse building)
Comparable to Alphabet (Google's parent company)
Nick dives into the metaverse and the VR and AR side of the rebrand and repositioning (well worth watching the haptics
Watch the innovation from the Meta tech team 👇
Nick and I answer a listener question: From James Sinfield @ Nestle
“In your honest opinions, will Facebook (Meta) succeed with their aim of building a new version of Internet? Is there a flaw in their thinking?”Then comes the future state of Facebook and Meta (including the breakdown of the metaverse)
The Facebook Timeline Discussed
Facebook launched 2004
The social network everyone wanted to join
Private => semi-private => public
Owned the space for photo sharing - became the place to share your photos and didn’t matter the quality
Where you become the real you online
Newsfeed pioneers
Log in with Facebook - default for many online profile creations
Like button - open analytics for Facebook
Smart Acquisitions of:
2009 FriendFeed (newsfeed)
2011 Gowalla (local),
2012 Instagram,
2013 Atlas (advertising),
2014 WhatsApp, Oculus 2014,
2016 MSQRD (filter trending app),
2017 TBH (trending app),
2018 Bloomsbury AI
2021 series of VR, gaming and AI purchasesGroups
Open and important for: Local, community, interests, random connections and sharing
“Marketplace” sells peer to peer or local. - they just announced live shopping to marketplace. The QVC style shopping experience
Unruly Power
Fake profiles
Election issues
Misinformation Engine - particularly with Covid etc
Moved to become a hardware provider and product company with portals and VR headsets
As someone who had them as enters the market, flirt as a competitor and then not put a dedicated team on it - made you realise it has power but its size and internal prioritises clash
Hit or Miss?
Missed blogging, missed creators, missed podcasts, struggled with workplace, killed on platform gaming, struggled to entice users on VR, struggled to make crypto work, struggled to make headways in charity and crowdfunding spaceFacebook are the masters of the false currency that is engagement aka likes and reactions
Facebook Papers TLDR
Trust Brand vs Relevant Brand: I'd argue Meta needs to be rebuilt the brand so that is trusted with your credit card - very few truly are and it's hurting huge brands away from advertising revenues
Famous images from the internal leaked documents aka Facebook Files / Papers
Facebook papers findings
Young people are spending less time on the service.
Fewer teens are signing up.
Many new teen accounts are duplicates, rather than unique new users.
Users across age groups are creating fewer posts.
Despite detailed research, employees don’t fully understand why these trends are happening or why product changes have failed to reverse them.
The famous internal meme
Here Are 6 Ways To Help Shape Your Thoughts For The Near Future
Facebook has turned into email 2.0 - a necessary evil for many 😬
Facebook was the gateway to the internet for millions of users - particularly in Asia and Africa and likely to be replaced with WhatsApp in near future 😟
Facebook isn't a social network it's an ad's network - Facebook's biggest challenge is its algorithms and controlling how content spreads.
This is not under control and they struggle to do so, so why will people rush to the new Meta products, software or hardware-driven. 🚩Meta has to shape and control the next generation of platforms. They never shaped the iPhone or any android device. 😓
"Our biggest competitor by far is iMessage" - Mark Zuckerberg on 31st Oct 2018 - they are desperate to compete with OS companies and know they are under Apple and Google’s control with app stores and ad revenues 💴
Meta is the mega brand rebuild - a new ten-year mission that will likely see a shift to more interaction, more tools, more games, more of your money spent on the platform 🚀
What do you think of the move? And the future?
Let us know @dannydenhard and @nickwalter23 on Twitter
