<story><title>Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook</title><url>https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/facebook-parent-meta-platforms-shares-tank-20-on-q4-earnings-miss-weak-outlook</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>p1necone</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get metaverse - they seem to be throwing lots of money and people at it, and hyping it up like it&amp;#x27;s the future. But from what I&amp;#x27;ve seen so far they&amp;#x27;ve just built VRChat, but worse. It&amp;#x27;s been done before by other people, it&amp;#x27;s not a new thing at all (Second Life released almost 20 years ago).&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a project that benefits from any of Facebooks strengths - game development companies are much better positioned to make compelling social VR experiences like this.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Metaverses&amp;quot; in general are a cool 80s sci-fi novel concept. But they&amp;#x27;re just video game environments with better-than-typical communication features - hyping them up with piles of marketing and betting the farm on your specific one being successful seems like an incredibly poor business move.</text></item><item><author>JCM9</author><text>Facebook’s core business model appears to be in decline. They don’t have a very diversified revenue stream despite trying various side businesses. This is the market worried that Facebook’s best days are behind it.&lt;p&gt;Facebook is betting the farm on the metaverse stuff but without meaningful financial results that’s not going to placate market concerns over what looks like a downhill future for the core businesses. Facebook’s less than fantastic record at making money on its other businesses doesn’t have the market terribly optimistic about about the future prospects metaverse stuff either. Net net stock down 20%.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; game development companies are much better positioned to make compelling social VR experiences like this.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s true. Game developer company culture is heavily oriented towards making and selling products to consumers. They know how to make games people will pay for, and the entire business and culture revolves around that.&lt;p&gt;With Meta and other ad-driven companies, the people aren&amp;#x27;t the consumers, they&amp;#x27;re the product. The whole incentive structure and architecture of the company is fundamentally different. Think about how a company like Facebook or Google has an entire army of sales people and enormous apps like AdWords and Facebook Ads Manager that are how the company &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; makes money. Game companies don&amp;#x27;t have that kind of stuff.&lt;p&gt;What they have is a bunch of programmers who know 3D rendering and networking. But Meta can simply hire those people—and game devs are used to bouncing around every couple of years—and they are. Several of my old EA coworkers are at Meta know working on it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook</title><url>https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/facebook-parent-meta-platforms-shares-tank-20-on-q4-earnings-miss-weak-outlook</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>p1necone</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get metaverse - they seem to be throwing lots of money and people at it, and hyping it up like it&amp;#x27;s the future. But from what I&amp;#x27;ve seen so far they&amp;#x27;ve just built VRChat, but worse. It&amp;#x27;s been done before by other people, it&amp;#x27;s not a new thing at all (Second Life released almost 20 years ago).&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a project that benefits from any of Facebooks strengths - game development companies are much better positioned to make compelling social VR experiences like this.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Metaverses&amp;quot; in general are a cool 80s sci-fi novel concept. But they&amp;#x27;re just video game environments with better-than-typical communication features - hyping them up with piles of marketing and betting the farm on your specific one being successful seems like an incredibly poor business move.</text></item><item><author>JCM9</author><text>Facebook’s core business model appears to be in decline. They don’t have a very diversified revenue stream despite trying various side businesses. This is the market worried that Facebook’s best days are behind it.&lt;p&gt;Facebook is betting the farm on the metaverse stuff but without meaningful financial results that’s not going to placate market concerns over what looks like a downhill future for the core businesses. Facebook’s less than fantastic record at making money on its other businesses doesn’t have the market terribly optimistic about about the future prospects metaverse stuff either. Net net stock down 20%.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zepto</author><text>You are wrong - it’s clear that you &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; get the metaverse.</text></comment>