Meta-Thoughts: Facebook a Muse
You told yourself you would give her up. How many times have you made that promise? But in the end, you come crawling back — through scandal, and breakup, privacy invasion, even a corporate reshuffling.
Facebook isn’t going anywhere, you can call it whatever you want. Will they recapture the younger generations? Possibly not. Like most folks in my age window, I’ve been on Facebook for a long time…
It’s unlikely that early cohorts and older users are going to migrate to another social network platform after the massive investment of time and curation we’ve done. However, it is likely that young people, hiding in new corners of the internet their parents haven’t found yet will find their way to Facebook when they begin to research their family history or just want to connect with their grandparents media.
Long-haul Observations
I think about social networks quite a bit, none of them are as open or as free with their bandwidth as the early Web before the browser wars. That’s fine. But if we’re committing to the channel, then we need more access to the underlying gears, in my opinion.
This tweet is over six years old, but I believe that Facebook delivered on this. Sure, Salesforce and LinkedIn are standards in the B2B (business-to-business) community but nothing has allowed businesses and brands to connect with their B2C (business-to-consumer) clientele in the way the Meta platforms have. I’d argue that a Facebook Page is a more reliable indicator of activity and factual information than a website is at this point.
Facebook has always been about identity to me, in both positive and negative connotations. Any extensions of that concept whether familial or professional naturally emerge as tangential to our social reputation, perceptually. The platform has made this perspective reliable.
Seriously, would you rather shout into the void by sending an email and leaving a voice message or know that a note has been delivered and viewed? I know what I prefer when I’m trying to contact a business and most people share my sentiments, if people’s anecdotes about automated call systems are an indication.
Shifting Attention
I always liked the bits about “synergy” on 30 Rock. If you’ve worked in a Forbes List corporate environment for any length of time, that line of thinking is pervasive, insidious, and impossible to ignore. Of course it’s happened at Facebook regarding its acquisitions like WhatsApp and most notably Instagram.
Facebook knows that Instagram as a novelty has been eclipsed by other platforms in terms of innovation, which is why they adopt features from Snapchat and Tiktok after they catch on with users. I firmly believe that Instagram does not need to be a standalone app at this point. It really has turned into a a rent-seeking/squatter mentality interface.
The reality is that shadow-banning is just the underside of ad-based revenue schemes, the screen-attention minutes have to get shaved off somewhere so that there are enough insertions for marketers to purchase (but not so many that the auction bids don’t continue going up).
The Telemetry Data
Where is Facebook headed this decade? Well, I think the best way to figure that out is by observing where it’s been. Obviously, their corporate restructuring into Meta is more than merely symbolic. But it doesn’t change anything about where the profits come from or how the sausage is made. The easy read is that the company is pivoting toward the metaverse, that makes sense given the Oculus acquisition so many years ago. However, I’m not certain we’re going to see widespread adoption of headsets just yet.
I’m also not an advocate for the constant antitrust issues that get hurled at the company either because who knows what outcome is unleashed by shortsighted measures. Look at how the case against Standard Oil played out for the entity as well as the majority share-owner.
Are there comparisons to be made between Facebook and utility companies? Yeah, and I’m particularly familiar with the issues of content and conduit as someone that has worked in both fields. We aren’t going back to the days of the Fairness Doctrine. The contents are not going to fit back into the box.
More importantly, I think it’s time to shelf the idea that crowdsourced content is preferred. America’s Funniest Home Videos deserves a slot somewhere out of primetime and call-in talk radio found a home on AM waves. I’m not going to pay for these though, not with money or attention. Same goes for reality TV, I just don’t find your neighbors to be captivating programming. I don’t know that obsessing over celebrities with no skills has reached its apex just yet but I’d guess our fascination with these types of content and social networks dovetail. Literally, these tools are an utter hassle with diminishing returns and will become passé, and eventually complete faux pas. Truthfully, we allowed the power of recommendation to be swallowed up by advertising-based motives like moths to the flame.
The early stages of the social media game were fun but those turns have been played. It now resembles any other entrenched industry. The folks at Facebook know this, which is why they have chosen to subvert the title and play a shell game with people’s attention. The platform was a desktop/laptop browser-native experience that successfully turned the corner to mobile. It’s not a given that the company can survive the next hardware shift without the software standards put in place during the early days of the Web.
Extended Reality experiences both virtual and augmented excel when the branding fades from our view. Is there an aesthetic and unobtrusive way to place logos within a fully visually immersive experience that isn’t part of the HUD? Likely the hardware and software experience is going to merge in ways that really only Apple has successfully maintained a “totality of image” producing.
Maybe how complex it is to create content in and for the metaverse will decrease, I personally don’t think it has over the last 15 years compared to what was required to be a creative in Second Life. What is certain is that this next hardware wave is currently in the late-70’s stage similar to PCs. Who will dominate the field? I don’t know, maybe none of the companies that we rely on today will make the cut.
Feeling Inspired
Ask yourself: does Facebook inspire you to create? Really, name any creative endeavor or output that has emerged from the platform. It’s a fantastic catalogue but it doesn’t give users the tools to generate and that is exactly what the metaverse is going to require if we don’t want it to look like a place to get swag from Coca-Cola and McDonalds.
This is why I think Facebook needs to transition out of being an amusing timesink and into a nexus for creatives to express their musings. Is that a competitively profitable position that will keep them in the black with ad revenue? I don’t know or care - I’d also like to see 20th century style advertising go away. Keeping Google and corporate divisions like it away from whatever the metaverse becomes will be vital if we want to foster legitimate community.
