The in crowd
The only thing that we can depend on, in anything, is that nothing is permanent. Institutions fall, businesses crumble, and icons are wiped away in an instant.
We try to ignore it and insist that “some things never change.” That’s not even remotely true. There may be cycles, certain ideas, and trends that after fading away reemerge and spread like happy, sneeze-free viruses. Economics is cyclical except that we are not, for instance going back to paying for everything with pennies. We will eventually move away from all physical currency. So, yes, the wax and wanes of economic fortunes, from boom to bust and growth to recession does have its circular look but how we make and lose that wealth has been changing ever since we converted from an all-trade economy to one based on gold-back currency to fiat.
I know I digress, but in my field, I’ve started to realize that platforms and products I once thought were permanent parts of our lives have faded away or stand a solid chance of disappearing.
Let’s look at Facebook for a moment. It’s a big company employing thousands of people but it’s also struggling to transform into something else. First, it was the Metaverse, an overhyped idea that while ahead of its time (probably by a solid decade or more thanks to the technology for effortlessly living in it not yet there) has eaten away so much of the company’s cushiony profit that Facebook…er…Meta… has been forced to cut not only staff by some of the perks they enjoy. Now, the company is hyping its push into AI but Facebook sits well behind Google and OpenAI in this space and, if we’re being honest, no one wants an AI inside of the platform where they celebrate weddings, births, birthdays, new jobs, a trip to Paris or to mourn deaths.
For better or worse, Facebook is a personal space used by billions who would rather not pay for any of Facebook’s other myriad services and certainly don’t want it training an AI on their personal information. No one says Facebook/Meta is doing that but the perception will be there.
My broader question, though, is can Facebook survive to a time when, say the Metaverse makes sense and it finally is the number one source for Metaverse hardware, software, and experiences? That’s probably not until 2035 or 2040, a time when the majority of people will be experiencing some portion of their lives in VR.
Back in 2021, a quarter of the US population used VR or AR. That may sound like a lot but that was during the pandemic when we weren’t able to have as many in-person experiences. The data also includes AR, which is not nearly as immersive and not even a part of what we consider the Metaverse.
I’m not arguing that Meta and Facebook are kaput in a matter of years but I think it pays to remember that the tech and social media trends we loved yesterday and today could be gone tomorrow.
Games we played obsessively five years ago like Angry Birds are now fodder for acquisition because, while the Angry Birds games are still fun and the movie franchise may be worth something, the mobile game is no longer listed among the top 10 iPhone games. I remember when Infinity Blade was the apex of mobile gaming, but now it’s long gone and scarcely remembered.
As we well know, it’s not just a lack of interest or market shifts that can alter the fortunes of tech businesses. Twitter teeters on the precipice of collapses thanks mostly to mismanagement by its new-ish owner and leader Elon Musk. To be fair, the business was a bit of a mess when he took over, but Musk has spent as much time clearing house as he has upsetting devoted users. Virtually every user-facing change he’s made is designed, it seems, to hurt those who did the most to grow the platform over the last 17 years. If Twitter survives Musk, it will be a miracle. if it does not, it won’t be a tragedy. Again, a world without Twitter is not an impossibility.
Tech brands are no more immune to changing tastes and bad luck than any other market.
I grew up in an era when everyone had IBM PCs. Then we all had Gateways, Emachines, HPs, Compaqs, Toshibas, and Macs. Only HPs and Macs still stand, and a host of other PC brands have taken the place of Gateways and all those other white box PC brands. Granted, many PC companies simply swallowed up smaller brands or sold to the Chinese (see IBM/Lenovo). I helped cover all this in what was then the country’s number one computer magazine, PC magazine. it lives on, but digital only. Back in the early 1990s, I thought it inconceivable that the majority of magazines I worked for and loved reading would be gone.
If there’s a poster child for changing consumer tastes and market trends, it’s the mobile phone space. No one in 2002 would’ve believed that virtually not a single person would still be using a BlackBerry Phone. We also thought the future was Palm Pilot.
Nothing is permanent. No business loss is a tragedy. No one knows anything.
That’s all for now
Be good to each other.