America on Meta
We've been here before
Hey all, Robin here and I hope you all enjoyed my most recent article on the BTB Substack on Social Tokens. Today we’re going back to the Metaverse and we’ll be starting off with an in-depth look at one of its most important leaders: Meta (Formerly, Facebook).
A tl;dr of Meta
Meta (formerly Facebook) is an American multinational corporation that owns and has developed Facebook, Instagram, Oculus (A VR hardware and software company), Messenger (Text communication app) and WhatsApp (A secure text communications app).
Meta is the undisputed king of social media with deep pockets and near total market dominance in how the world communicates on the internet. They own three of the world’s most popular social media properties—Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp—that are used by billions of people all around the globe. While Meta is seeing increasing competition from ByteDance’s TikTok (one of the only companies to give them a run for their money in recent memory), they are, for the most part, smoothly sailing and one of the five goliaths of tech (MAANG or Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google).
However, Facebook, a long time ago, was once David. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes in Harvard dorm room H33, Facebook had the unique mission of trying to create an online directory of college students so you could learn who was taking your class. The company soon expanded to high-schools in 2006 and eventually the world. Key events during this formative period include the hiring of Sheryl Sandberg (Meta’s current Chief Operating Officer), the creation of the like button, Facebook games such as Farmville, and Platform (Facebook’s platform to build applications on the website). During Facebook’s formative years, the market for social media was starting to have its stars align with the creation of Friendster and MySpace which popularized the idea. However, Myspace eventually killed Friendster and became the undisputed king of social media for a while. However, Facebook would eventually kill MySpace in time due to the MySpace’s acquisition by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp which put creative constraints on the company and eventually saw its slow but painful decline to Facebook.
On May 12, 2012 Facebook would IPO and be listed on public markets and enter its stage as a public company. Key events during this period include the acquisition of Instagram, a failed battle against Snapchat, the acquisition of Oculus (one of the best acquisitions in American business history imo), acquisition of WhatsApp, and development of Instagram into the world’s second largest social media platform.
In the advent of the 2016 election, Facebook faced increasing scrutiny from the public and internally due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Key events during this period include the development of Instagram stories, developing Oculus in the video game space, acquiring CTRL Labs, development of Facebook horizons and a minor but growing pushback against social media in the press.
However, on October 28th 2021, Facebook rebranded to Meta to signify their move into the Metaverse and cement their future dominance as the king of communication. Facebook sees the future of communication in the Metaverse; shared virtual worlds that can be accessed by mobile phones, computers, vr headsets, and even smart glasses. They can host to games, conferences, work, play, and enable us to explore virtual worlds with friends.
Meta’s War Chest and Arsenal
Meta’s Metaverse division (which includes Oculus, Facebook Reality Labs—Facebook’s Augmented, Virtual Reality, and Haptics (how to replicate touch) research lab—and Facebook’s many acquired VR game studios) is now receiving additional annual investment from Facebook starting at $10,000,000,000. Yes, you read that right, starting at 10 whole billion dollars and progressively investing more into building out the Metaverse. Currently, the majority of this year, 2021’s expenses appears to be going into marketing the Oculus’ Quest 2 headset to consumers.
Besides Meta’s war chest of $10 billion for the Metaverse, they also have the best talent in the world for augmented and virtual reality at Facebook Reality Labs to create breakthroughs in technology that eventually become products that are put in the hands of consumers. Many of these researchers are PhDs from top universities such as MIT and Carnegie Mellon University who have pioneered augmented and virtual reality and have consistently produced incredible talent.
Though Meta’s main weapon to control the Metaverse is Oculus. Oculus is one of the only producers in the world of virtual reality headsets and they’re viewed as the industry standard for gaming and in the workplace. Meta views Oculus as the ability to control the gates to the Metaverse and is exactly why they’re focusing on lowering the price of the headsets and marketing them aggressively.
Understanding Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, where do I even begin covering this man? Mark Zuckerburg is Meta’s CEO and the youngest Fortune 500 CEO in America at the whopping age of 37. A long time thinker and a massive fanboy of Greek and Roman emperors, Zuckerburg has a cutthroat approach to business that includes annihilating any and all competition or giving them a comfy buyout in exchange that they work for him. Most of the time, many competitors who dare to even touch Facebook are bought out before they become a problem for Zuck and often immediately, like Instagram and WhatsApp. The only business to have escaped Zuck’s wrath was Snapchat which successfully managed to fend Zuck off and become a social media titan in their own right.
Zuck’s not like most Silicon Valley CEOs that I’ve had the chance to study; he manages Facebook as something of a kingdom where Zuckerberg has the final say on all product matters. He is also deeply paranoid of Facebook eventually being usurped by competition which is why he poured almost a billion dollars into trying to control the teen social media market and would have mixed results at best. He is always trying to nurture talent at Meta so Meta will eventually create the thing that’ll kill itself before someone else does. This is extremely unorthodox thinking in Silicon Valley—most companies when they reach a zenith like Facebook hold onto the belief that they will always dominate the market. A true long term leader, Zuck is a formidable adversary to anyone who tries to compete against him due to his long term vision and cutthroat business practices.
Understanding Sandberg
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Who on Earth is Sheryl Sandberg?” Sandberg is Zuckerburg’s lieutenant and Meta’s COO (she’s in charge of how the company actually makes money and works). Arguably more important than Zuckerburg himself due to her monetization and creation of Facebook’s ad network, Sandberg is a Grade A stooge remarking, “My attitude has always been that you’d better keep your head down and do your work”. That sentiment stands in stark contrast to the company she joined in 2006 that had a corporate culture of changing the world and not just viewing work as a place to obtain money, but as a place to enact change.
Sandberg has proven to be instrumental to Facebook’s success since she has helped the company obtain billions in revenue and has done something rare in social media; make it profitable. If you’d want one woman to squarely point the finger at for seeing ads on your timeline you can point to Ms. Sandberg who pioneered the concept at Facebook.
Sandberg will likely prove to be instrumental to Meta’s success in the Metaverse as she will help the company monetize the Metaverse. How exactly? We don’t know yet but I have a hunch it’ll involve three words words; data-mining and ads.
Meta’s Spear
Meta’s main spear to attack the Metaverse is Oculus. Oculus a consumer VR company on a mission to introduce virtual reality to the masses via a cheap and incredible VR headset. Like I’ve said before, Meta’s acquisition of Oculus was an incredible buy in hindsight—they bought the world’s future computing platform for cheap and now get to build the future of computing with them. Oculus has slowly been building out games for the headset and encouraging developers to build for their headsets. Meta has also acquired VR game studios paying top dollar for the best in the business to create incredible VR games and their strategy has certainly worked.
They make, arguably, the best mass market consumer VR headset in the world and they’re willing to subsidize the adoption of such devices even if it means spending massive amounts of money.
When you look at Oculus’ latest acquisitions they all have one thread in common; they’re simply incredible experiences: BigBox VR’s Population One, Beat Games’ insanely popular Beat Saber, and Downpour Interactive’s Onward.
Meta is betting big on virtual experiences that are not only good, but they are especially fans of virtual experiences that bring people together and make them compete against each other. However, Meta isn’t only betting on games.
Horizons
Today, December 9th 2021, Meta has officially opened Horizons to the general public. Horizons is Meta’s Metaverse product for the Oculus Quest 2. It is an ever expansive virtual world that allows users to explore virtual space.
Here are its main uses:
User generated worlds: Users can create virtual worlds to do nearly anything they imagine. Want to make a virtual coffee shop? Go right ahead! Want to create a virtual bar? Go right ahead! Want to make a zombies game? Go right ahead!
Corporate generated worlds for work: Businesses can design virtual workplaces as an antidote to endless Zoom calls for work. It lets workers bring their keyboards (some keyboards, Meta doesn’t say which) and computer into VR and work with their colleagues as if they were in physical space.
Something incredibly fascinating about Horizons is that Meta is entirely letting the world be created by and for players. Meta is already investing $10 million to recruit developers in a community fund to build on the platform. Right now you can play all sorts of puzzles, games, first-person shooters, paintball, escape rooms, and anything you could imagine. There’s also a near-endless array of virtual places to explore and talk with people.
I wish I could write more about the subject, but since it has only been released today, the majority of creators are too busy just getting busy building on it. I’ll be sure to keep you all informed about some of the incredible games and experiences being built on the platform.
The AOL Strategy
Meta is in a very unique position that very few businesses have ever experienced; the ability to shape a game changing new technology as an incumbent.
Meta appears to be most mimicking AOL’s strategy during the early 90s where they sought to bring the internet to as many individuals as possible and to “let a thousand flowers bloom”. Meta is continually working on reducing the price of their headsets and is trying to carve a new niche in media where the VR headset becomes a new computer and vehicle for experiences.
”Let a thousand flowers bloom” is a remark Steve Case, the CEO of AOL, said in a NY Times, and it has come to define the internet and the philosophy towards creating platforms. Meta has learned well from the failures of the internet and knows that if they put creative constraints on Horizons that they will suffer deeply.
Just as the AOL empire was built on chat, the Meta empire is being more broadly built on connection and experience.
Meta, just like AOL during the 90s, will need to embark on one of the greatest marketing campaigns in history to bring the Metaverse to billions.
When you think of the greatest marketers in history you often think of Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, or Henry Ford. But you’ve probably never even heard of Jan Brandt and she’s arguably more important than all of them combined.
Jan Brandt was VP of Marketing at American Online in 1993 and she came up with one of the most brilliant and important marketing campaigns in history to bring the internet to millions—she got users to try the service by making it nearly impossible to not get an AOL disc.
Jan realized that the majority of people being asked to choose online services had no clue what they even were. Users were pointing mouses at the computer like a remote control. It was in that moment that Brandt realized she must start from scratch and needed users to try the service, so she approached CEO Steve Case and asked for $250,000 to mass produce AOL trial discs. The results were nothing short of astounding—people just stuck the discs in their computers and the service had a response rate of around 10%. It was an unheard of response in direct marketing.
Jan doubled down on the marketing and decided to get every AOL trial disc in the hands of someone who would ever be near a computer. You could get AOL discs at blockbusters, mailboxes, shipped with your computer, baseball games, and even in magazines and newspapers. It was a staggering loss for America Online, but it paid off in the long run.
It was through Jan’s brilliant carpet-bombing marketing campaign that we can all thank for the internet and Mark Zuckerberg would be extremely wise to heed her strategy; get the Metaverse in the hands of as many people as possible. Meta should continue to focus on lowering the price of their headsets and aggressively marketing the Metaverse.
Looking Towards The Future
Today, the Metaverse wars have officially heated up with Meta finally releasing their product. Who will win this war? Will it be Roblox, RecRoom, Meta, or will it be a new company that we’ve never even heard of before?
We’ll have the pleasure of watching it unravel, and I’ll be sure to keep you all informed.
Thank you reading, do good in the world and remember to keep playing!
Nice write-up, Robin!
AOL CDs also made great coasters.