FB - Facebook

[manuelbean]

Actually, killing these sort of networks, and this larger "anti-cookie" movement just make it that much harder for independent publishers/developers/advertisers to cope. Both Google and Facebook have done studies on the effects of this sort of crippling, and it basically means something like 50-60% revenue losses for "out of network" publishers.

 

So what does that mean in the long-term? Well, it means the monetization potential for content will be much higher in a distribution context where those identity revenue boosts can be obtained. In other words, content delivered within the Facebook app itself.

 

It's an immediate hit, of course, to Facebook's revenue. But it's one of those types of things that does survivable harm to the Big Players and is possibly an extinction level event for all the losers who have been trying to make a somewhat arm's length model work.

 

Hi Johnny, culd you please rephrase your post? I'm finding it hard to understand. Maybe because I'm not a nativ speaker. what do you mean by "t means the monetization potential for content will be much higher in a distribution context where those identity revenue boosts can be obtained. In other words, content delivered within the Facebook app itself." and "it's one of those types of things that does survivable harm to the Big Players and is possibly an extinction level event for all the losers who have been trying to make a somewhat arm's length model work.". thank you

[henrysalt]

FB looking more interesting at these prices. With the focus being more towards privacy wouldn't legislation actually help FB? Who's going to be able to start another social media company? Their MOAT is looking more and more insurmountable.

[plato1976]

Isn't TikTok a great threat if it will continue to be operational in the U.S. and most other regions?

 

FB looking more interesting at these prices. With the focus being more towards privacy wouldn't legislation actually help FB? Who's going to be able to start another social media company? Their MOAT is looking more and more insurmountable.

[johnny]

Actually, killing these sort of networks, and this larger "anti-cookie" movement just make it that much harder for independent publishers/developers/advertisers to cope. Both Google and Facebook have done studies on the effects of this sort of crippling, and it basically means something like 50-60% revenue losses for "out of network" publishers.

 

So what does that mean in the long-term? Well, it means the monetization potential for content will be much higher in a distribution context where those identity revenue boosts can be obtained. In other words, content delivered within the Facebook app itself.

 

It's an immediate hit, of course, to Facebook's revenue. But it's one of those types of things that does survivable harm to the Big Players and is possibly an extinction level event for all the losers who have been trying to make a somewhat arm's length model work.

 

Hi Johnny, culd you please rephrase your post? I'm finding it hard to understand. Maybe because I'm not a nativ speaker. what do you mean by "t means the monetization potential for content will be much higher in a distribution context where those identity revenue boosts can be obtained. In other words, content delivered within the Facebook app itself." and "it's one of those types of things that does survivable harm to the Big Players and is possibly an extinction level event for all the losers who have been trying to make a somewhat arm's length model work.". thank you

 

The basic finding in both Facebook and Google's research on this topic is this: if the ad vendor "knows" who you are, they can generate over twice the amount of ad revenue with the same number of impressions/clicks/whatever.

 

It's this basic reality that makes the "tracking" technology worth pursuing--not just for Facebook, but for anybody who owns content that they're attempting to monetize through ads. Being able to add some code to your own website that makes it so that your visitors can be served the Identity Enhanced© ads makes your business much more valuable.

 

If platform vendors (or governments) make this sort of thing impossible/illegal/impractical, it just means that the only way for your content to get the highest-revenue advertising would be for that content to be served in a context where the Facebook Identity of your users is ascertained through some other means.

 

This would mean either integrating an explicit "Log in with Facebook" type function to your own app/website, or Facebook actually making itself available as the primary channel for your content within their own app (since both of these situations mean the Facebook Account of the user is known, and therefore the ads can be more sharply tailored.

 

That's the long-run outcome here--this sort of policy optimization doesn't change the fact that Facebook has the ability to serve vastly more profitable ads, it just limits the avenues content-creators have available to try to get a share of those marginal profits--Facebook (and Google) are still in the driver's seat here, still have the secret sauce that generates the cash, and it'll just require even more deep integration into their operations to access some of it. Not a problem for the durability Zuck's empire, I imagine.

[Spekulatius]

Isn't TikTok a great threat if it will continue to be operational in the U.S. and most other regions?

 

FB looking more interesting at these prices. With the focus being more towards privacy wouldn't legislation actually help FB? Who's going to be able to start another social media company? Their MOAT is looking more and more insurmountable.

 

Furthermore, it demonstrates that a competitor can come out of nowhere and take serious mindshare and perhaps market share. Unlike in the past, Facebook can’t buy these competitors any more.

 

It remains to be seen how much of a competitors TikTok remains without having the secret sauce of the AI algo developed in China. Perhaps, they can come up with a good replacement algo, perhaps not.

[henrysalt]

Did FB really lose to TikTok? Isn't Instagram Reels a better product?

 

I'm still obviously bullish on FB compared to the rest of FANGAM because there are many free call options: Libra, Oculus, Jio (10% owner) in addition to monetizing Whatsaap, Messenger, etc., and of course improving ad revenue.

[changegonnacome]

Isn't TikTok a great threat if it will continue to be operational in the U.S. and most other regions?

 

FB looking more interesting at these prices. With the focus being more towards privacy wouldn't legislation actually help FB? Who's going to be able to start another social media company? Their MOAT is looking more and more insurmountable.

 

Furthermore, it demonstrates that a competitor can come out of nowhere and take serious mindshare and perhaps market share. Unlike in the past, Facebook can’t buy these competitors any more.

 

It remains to be seen how much of a competitors TikTok remains without having the secret sauce of the AI algo developed in China. Perhaps, they can come up with a good replacement algo, perhaps not.

 

Can’t remember where I read it but the central thesis that social networks have impenetrable moats once the right network effect takes hold has been shown to be somewhat limited in that the social network format type matters a lot. In each format type a platform will come to dominant & permanently win one consumption format and are subsequently unlikely to be replaced ever in that format type.......the problem is that social network format preferences can change over time as we’ve seen:

 

Facebook.com - dominated & won real identity, text based social networking but this got supplanted over time

Twitter - dominated & has won anonymous / real identity based micro blogging/real time news

WhatsApp - dominated & won asynchronous cross platform messaging

Instagram - came to dominate & win the photo driven social network arena which supplanted the text driven Facebook network (improving smartphone cameras quality allowed this). Zuckerburg was very lucky to be able to pick this up when he did. See below.

SnapChat - looked like it was going to dominate & win the video driven ‘story’ & messaging genre till Zuckerburg basically cloned the story/video/messaging aspect into Instagram (improving smartphone connectivity allowed this format)

YouTube- long/short form horizontal video platform

TikTok - has basically highlighted that there was one more media end point that Zuckerburg had missed - which was short form vertical video with creator templates.......the template allowed less creative types to get involved......which removed the ‘blank page’ problem YouTube creators have while also removing the horizontal video aspect which doesn’t work on phones

 

Facebook has the right approach incubating Reels inside of instagram for the moment and they should pop Donald a campaign contribution in the mail for making TikTok’s future uncertain.......every creater on there is desperately trying to off ramp their audience to Instagram.

 

The long term Q for Facebook is what other social network formats are left - they’ve won & will keep the text, photo, messaging & the ‘video stories’ formats unless broken up of course. The VR/AR format is further down the road and Zuckerburg knows that, they can still easily lose here.

 

Anyway they’re my hastily thrown together thoughts!

[Broeb22]

Confused...there are a few instances in your list where FB or one of its divisions has successfully copied other formats and come to dominate them. So you’re almost disproving your own premise...

 

Also, I remember a time when there was concern whether FB would adapt to mobile and they successfully migrated their usage to mobile.

 

If you want to draw a different comparison, you could say that Facebook is like Microsoft in its early days...became dominant in one aspect of people’s social lives and then has aggressively copied competitors until they dominate all or most social media use cases. Likewise Microsoft aggressively copied anyone with an application that could be used in the office and came to dominate many core office products admittedly with average/mediocre solutions.

 

[changegonnacome]

Confused...there are a few instances in your list where FB or one of its divisions has successfully copied other formats and come to dominate them. So you’re almost disproving your own premise...

 

Also, I remember a time when there was concern whether FB would adapt to mobile and they successfully migrated their usage to mobile.

 

If you want to draw a different comparison, you could say that Facebook is like Microsoft in its early days...became dominant in one aspect of people’s social lives and then has aggressively copied competitors until they dominate all or most social media use cases. Likewise Microsoft aggressively copied anyone with an application that could be used in the office and came to dominate many core office products admittedly with average/mediocre solutions.

 

Yes that’s my point - if you manage to dominate the particular format, you tend to own it over time and have a defensible position. Facebook has succeeded in buying or cloning competitors before they ever got to that dominance point - Instagram (bought), WhatsApp (bought), SnapChat (clone before it had gone mainstream)

 

FB via instagram managed to head off for example SnapChat who innovated the format (video/stories) but had not yet managed to scale up and dominate....it remained the preserve of adolescents......and Instagram came in and basically closed of their pathway to dominance in that format by leveraging FB’s core property and instagram to keep SnapChat in the much younger demographic.

 

TikTok has innovated that short form vertical video format.....and from what I can was scaling it at early FB/Insta like speeds and way better than Snapchat ever did i.e kids,  teens & adults were using TikTok.......leaving possibly not a lot of white space for FB to head off their possible future dominance

[fareastwarriors]

 

Facebook Needs Trump Even More Than Trump Needs Facebook

 

Employees fear Zuckerberg’s commitment to free speech is more about protecting the president than the company’s ideals.

 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-17/facebook-and-mark-zuckerberg-need-trump-even-more-than-trump-needs-facebook

[Liberty]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-facebook-shutdown-exclusive/exclusive-vietnam-threatens-to-shut-down-facebook-over-censorship-requests-source-idUSKBN27Z1MP

 

Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook FB.O in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform

[Jurgis]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-facebook-shutdown-exclusive/exclusive-vietnam-threatens-to-shut-down-facebook-over-censorship-requests-source-idUSKBN27Z1MP

 

Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook FB.O in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform

 

This was expected. If FB censors content in US (whether that's positive or negative is Politics section debate), then every other country can ask the question why they can't make FB censor content according to their wishes.

[rkbabang]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-facebook-shutdown-exclusive/exclusive-vietnam-threatens-to-shut-down-facebook-over-censorship-requests-source-idUSKBN27Z1MP

 

Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook FB.O in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform

 

This was expected. If FB censors content in US (whether that's positive or negative is Politics section debate), then every other country can ask the question why they can't make FB censor content according to their wishes.

 

Exactly. It's hard to maintain the position that you are just a platform and that you are not responsible for the content of your users when you are putting in an enormous amount of effort actively censoring wrongthink and deplatforming thought criminals in the United States.

[DooDiligence]

Personally, I think users could easily leave en masse if restrictions they don't care for are enacted and another functional platform is willing to cater to their particular beliefs. How many FB users would flee if they weren't being fed what they wanted?

 

My local news station has already been touting a competing product for Trump lovers.

 

How willing are management to sustain losses? They're beholden to shareholders.

 

How willing are legislators to protect truth? They're beholden to constituents?

 

---

 

It's not the gun manufacturers fault, and yet.

 

 

Roast me.

[johnny]

Yes, 70 year olds might wish they could find something like Facebook that allowed them to share Hunter Biden's dick pics and speculate the Kamala is Osama with gender confirmation surgery. But they're not going to get that. At best, they'll get a shoddy implementation that suffers from lack of engineering talent (because 80% of engineers are trans). Even with good engineering, it won't be able to afford top-tier hardware/cloud services, since you need F500 companies paying your bandwidth bills to allow unlimited photo/video uploads (and 99% of F500 CEOs are trans). Even if those two problems were somehow solved, it would fail the most critical feature of a social network: connecting you with (almost) everybody you know.

 

Conservatives aren't going to leave Facebook en masse over politics for the same reason that so many AR-15 lovers stay in California, even though moving one state over would let them own machine guns and pay 0% in income tax. California, like Facebook, is an aggregate product, and as much as you may bitch and moan about some aspects about it, you can't get the other stuff in Henderson, Nevada.

 

It's not just about getting "I saw Michelle Obama in the primate exhibit at the zoo" posts. Its about sharing those posts with people you love--your grandkids, who are probably not going to accompany you to 1488Book. If this was going to work anywhere, it'd have succeeded with Gab, since Twitter is actually an order of magnitude more simple, as a product, and doesn't actually rely on 1:1 relationships in the conventional social media sense. It didn't, as far as I can tell. And the only explanation is that the people who say they wanted Gab, really just wanted Twitter to become Gab. They don't want to leave Twitter, they just wish it were different.

[merkhet]

Yes, 70 year olds might wish they could find something like Facebook that allowed them to share Hunter Biden's dick pics and speculate the Kamala is Osama with gender confirmation surgery. But they're not going to get that. At best, they'll get a shoddy implementation that suffers from lack of engineering talent (because 80% of engineers are trans). Even with good engineering, it won't be able to afford top-tier hardware/cloud services, since you need F500 companies paying your bandwidth bills to allow unlimited photo/video uploads (and 99% of F500 CEOs are trans). Even if those two problems were somehow solved, it would fail the most critical feature of a social network: connecting you with (almost) everybody you know.

 

Conservatives aren't going to leave Facebook en masse over politics for the same reason that so many AR-15 lovers stay in California, even though moving one state over would let them own machine guns and pay 0% in income tax. California, like Facebook, is an aggregate product, and as much as you may bitch and moan about some aspects about it, you can't get the other stuff in Henderson, Nevada.

 

It's not just about getting "I saw Michelle Obama in the primate exhibit at the zoo" posts. Its about sharing those posts with people you love--your grandkids, who are probably not going to accompany you to 1488Book. If this was going to work anywhere, it'd have succeeded with Gab, since Twitter is actually an order of magnitude more simple, as a product, and doesn't actually rely on 1:1 relationships in the conventional social media sense. It didn't, as far as I can tell. And the only explanation is that the people who say they wanted Gab, really just wanted Twitter to become Gab. They don't want to leave Twitter, they just wish it were different.

 

+1 to all of this

[Liberty]

Writeup on FB by Packy M:

 

https://notboring.substack.com/p/everybody-hates-facebook

[bathtime]

Writeup on FB by Packy M:

 

https://notboring.substack.com/p/everybody-hates-facebook

 

I am on board with that argument and think FB will increase in market value.

[Liberty]

[gary17]

thank you, your majesty  ;D  (Zuck is the real king ruling the world LOL... j/k...)

[manuelbean]

Was Trump posting on Facebook? Was anyone aware of this? I don't think he will miss it that much (or I). He has Twitter.

[DooDiligence]

Was Trump posting on Facebook? Was anyone aware of this? I don't think he will miss it that much (or I). He has Twitter.

 

His Twitter account is locked. There's also nothing coming from the official POTUS or WH accounts.

 

Hopefully, he's sitting in a bunker, contemplating a bleak future.

[arcube]

Like him or not, Zuck made a strategic move ensuring longevity of his business in it's current form. After being a cuck for DT, what a pivot at the right time. Very opportunistic. FB will thrive in so many ways. Lot to divide people on while keeping them connected!

[johnny]

Like him or not, Zuck made a strategic move ensuring longevity of his business in it's current form.

 

I really couldn't disagree more. With no satisfying underlying principle guiding this decision, this is absolutely not ensuring the longevity of -anything- in its current form. We're still in a state of complete disequilibrium, and Facebook remains a big juicy target for Ambitious Regulators, Aspiring (or Degrading) Politicians, and Culture Warriors. All we've done is reaffirm that the social media empires are taking more seriously their holy role in deciding what thoughts are permissible, no longer worried about exercising any humility due to the social status of the Thinker.

 

That said, I don't think the decision makes any of this worse. It is probably a tactically clever thing--ban POTUS when there isn't enough time on the clock for the full legal issues to flesh themselves out, while everybody is too busy with A Crisis of Something Else to focus on litigating it in public, but giving yourself something to point to to show you weren't Complicit during the Age of Orange Hitler.

 

So, as far as what it means for the value of the business? Probably not huge, maybe a very slight positive? But considering how monumental this shit is at the layer of "society", I'd say the civilizational uncertainty makes me wanna dial the correct multiple for everything back a bit.

 

[dwy000]

Like him or not, Zuck made a strategic move ensuring longevity of his business in it's current form.

 

I really couldn't disagree more. With no satisfying underlying principle guiding this decision, this is absolutely not ensuring the longevity of -anything- in its current form. We're still in a state of complete disequilibrium, and Facebook remains a big juicy target for Ambitious Regulators, Aspiring (or Degrading) Politicians, and Culture Warriors. All we've done is reaffirm that the social media empires are taking more seriously their holy role in deciding what thoughts are permissible, no longer worried about exercising any humility due to the social status of the Thinker.

 

That said, I don't think the decision makes any of this worse. It is probably a tactically clever thing--ban POTUS when there isn't enough time on the clock for the full legal issues to flesh themselves out, while everybody is too busy with A Crisis of Something Else to focus on litigating it in public, but giving yourself something to point to to show you weren't Complicit during the Age of Orange Hitler.

 

So, as far as what it means for the value of the business? Probably not huge, maybe a very slight positive? But considering how monumental this shit is at the layer of "society", I'd say the civilizational uncertainty makes me wanna dial the correct multiple for everything back a bit.

 

I suspect it might have had less to do with the specific events than the fact that as of yesterday the House, the Senate and the Presidency are now all controlled by a party that has expressed a desire to control or break up big tech.  If you want to argue for self-regulation you need to show a willingness to do it.