Is it possible that META could be the smartest tech company on the planet right now?
That’s a controversial question and there are a lot of differing opinions on whether META is making the right choices in how they are running their company these days. I won’t be able to answer the question definitively, but I do think there is more to META than people give them credit for.
I created a video on this – so you can watch it if you would rather see me speaking.
I wanted to look at META a little differently than some of the other opinions I’ve seen – positive and negative. I looked at META from the perspective of the utility they provide today and seem to be planning for in the future. I don’t work for, and I have to relationship to META, so this is my outsider perspective here.
As an example of some criticism I hear – and disagree with – are those commenting on META’s stock price and it’s current sharp decline as an indicator of META’s future.
I’ve been around long enough to remember high stock prices for a company called Silicon Graphics and low stock prices for a company called Apple. In fact, I remember Apple’s launch of OS X to replace OS 9 and the huge backlash from the Apple community at the time. The stock dropped, but it eventually ended up being the foundational software across all the products we see Apple selling today. Apple’s pivot to OS X most likely saved the company. The stock seems to have recovered.
The criticisms of META based on stock price seem naive and familiar to me. Stock markets tend towards the short-term of projected profits in an upcoming Quarter. Focusing on the short-term, in my opinion, limits innovation and growth. META may be a company that needs a longer term outlook – a buy and hold mentality – because they appear to be in the process of reinvention as opposed to incremental growth. Which may actually be why they are genius. Disclaimer – I’m not a Financial Advisor – so don’t be betting your money on my opinions. If this video goes viral I’ll be buying some META stock though.
I’m aware that investment takes Capital – and a falling stock price is not particularly great news for META because it limits the Capital they have to innovate. They are still quite a valuable company though – and, I wouldn’t have minded buying more Apple stock in the early 2000’s!
Looking at the history of Apple, could it be that META is on a similar path? Apple always had a hardware aspect to their business, and META was born as a software company – so there are some significant differences, but there may also be some similarities. Sometimes you have to invent a market to own a market.
What about the META hardware?
I have the Oculus Quest 2 and use Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 at work – so I’ve experienced both VR and AR. While I don’t have the new Meta Quest Pro – it does look very functional as a blended device – allowing for frictionless movement between the immersive worlds of VR and the augmented worlds of AR. I’m looking forward to trying it out myself – and seeing more hardware introduced over time. As Apple demonstrated, unique hardware is needed for unique software to succeed. It’s a whole new business to enter, but if META does well in this regard – then they will have a much greater chance of over-all success. If anyone from META is watching this – don’t be shy about hooking me up to review your hardware! I can’t guarantee I’ll be nice, but I’ll be honest.
While we all wait for that to happen – let’s look at how I think technology companies that provide utility as their main focus are better positioned to succeed – even if providing that utility requires them to enter the hardware market.
What do I mean by “utility”?
Back when META was known as Facebook – their utility to consumers could be described as providing social connection. This social connection expanded to provide utility to business’ by generating data about those user connections so that advertising could be targeted and effective. Facebook became a valuable resource for everyone involved in connecting people to people – and, of course, people to products. They were so good at it that some governments adopted an aggressive regulatory stance against their activities. Which is a massive subject on its own.
That analysis is a slight over-simplification, but it did allow the company to grow massively in terms of impact and value. To the point where they have such a large market presence that the only way to grow would be to increase the population of the planet. In fact, when we see any slowing of growth – it should be seen as expected behavior.
When you have 1.5 Billion users in a market where there are only 5 billion people that even have Internet access you are doing very well. Mix into that the fact that some of those 5 billion Internet users are prevented access to Facebook by regulatory and governmental limitations and a slow down in growth is a normal part of market saturation. To grow means there needs to be change. Facebook hasn’t gone anywhere – META has revenues that make it one of the world’s most valuable companies.
So META is making changes. To understand META’s current, and potentially future position in the context of observed changes, let’s take a look at a model for technology adoption – the SAMR model.
Developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura as a way of looking at technology in education – if does provide a way of thinking about emerging technology in general. I think it shines some light on whether META will succeed in the future and whether we will see them as being geniuses or not.
In the SAMR Model, Technology is viewed as a way to either enhance or transform the way we complete tasks. Technology may substitute, augment, modify, or refine the way we do things. Again, originally developed for education, I think he model does support any technical adoption process.
It’s easiest to see when technology is acting to enhance our experience of the world. We understand what we are doing and we can see how the technology substitutes or augments what we are doing.
It’s more difficult to imagine how technology may completely redefine our way of doing things. Redesigning how we do things, or doing things we couldn’t imagine doing is… hard to imagine. It is in these tasks that we look to leaders, visionaries, and geniuses to help guide our understanding and drive utility.
This becomes even more complex when we start looking at different segments of users, their attitudes towards, and how they intend to use technology: something I’ll break down in a moment.
It’s within this transformational realm where I think META just might be onto something bigger than many may realize. They just might have found an architecture that is genius. We may be looking back to 2022 one day and wondering why we didn’t see it earlier. Or not. I’m not a clairvoyant.
What I do know is that new technologies tend to have a level of imperfection as they evolve. For example, VR in the mid 90’s was actually a thing. It just wasn’t a great thing. There were immersive headsets that allowed you to look at wireframe objects, it evolved over time, but it always remained somewhat of a niche technology due to cost and capability. My first experiences with VR was playing DOOM in a shopping mall wearing a super heavy headset.
The technology has some to the point where META has some interesting differences to those previous attempts to make VR and AR mainstream. Both in software and hardware.
At different stages in technological adoption, different users will have different tolerances for imperfections. I see the following categories of users and uses that I think are helpful for examining META, their Metaverse, and their work in VR/AR:
1. Experimenters
2, Gamers
3. Social Networkers
4. Workplace and Education
5. Lifestyle and Everyday use
If we look at each of these areas in terms of tolerance for imperfection (sometimes referred to as friction) and we also look at how technologies can evolve across these domains in terms of the SAMR model – we might start to see a larger picture emerging of just why META might be positioned for massive success.
First – the Experimenters.
When it comes to experimenters – the early adopters and those open to new ideas – there is a pretty large tolerance for imperfections and even failure. This probably describes myself pretty well. I have a number of products that had potential, required me to jump through hoops to use, and eventually succeeded or failed. As an example, I had the first generation Palm Pilot, many PocketPCs, first generation iPod, and even was a founding member if Google’s Stadia online gaming service – that is closing down in the next month.
All of these technologies required me to struggle with one or more aspects of the tools and functionality – but as an experimenter – I’m fine with that. This is the same with the earliest VR and AR tools. Spending 5 hours to setup a 30 second experience that crashes is completely acceptable to this group of users.?
Then, there are the Gamers.
There is a surprising amount of tolerance for imperfection amongst Gamers as well. Not in terms of utility – they want to play the game and don’t want it to crash, but in terms of elements such as learning new controls, graphics, and the environment of the experience. One of the most popular games ever is Minecraft – and for anyone making fun of the Avatars in the Metaverse – take a look at the ones in Minecraft! While Minecraft players do have legs – they aren’t that great – and what about PAC-man?
The point here is that Gamers will tolerate more abstraction. So it doesn’t surprise me that after the experimenters group, the first group to use VR extensively are Gamers. To the point where META has several successful, money-making games on their platform.
The Oculus products (I have the Quest 2) make it very easy to get into the environment and play a game quickly. The games are entertaining and take advantage of the environment in a way that is completely entertaining. Many games are not just substitutions of exiting games, but have become transformational – changing the way we can play a game. As such, they are much further along the technical maturity curve than other aspects of VR – such as Social interactions.
Social Interactivity
Technology for social interactions are an area that appeals to an even broader audience than experimenters and gamers – if you take Social Networks as a whole.
The rise of Social Networks is a massive subject unto itself, but from a technical standpoint – those that have succeeded are both simple and relatively frictionless. Especially those that run on any hardware such as smartphones that make it easy to text, photograph, and video the world around us.
This was the genesis of Facebook and represents the roots of META. However, it’s also something I think is potentially limiting to their growth in terms of the Metaverse. Why? Because there is a very low tolerance for any technical friction in most users of social networks. People of all technical capabilities use social networks to interact – and they don’t generally want to work too hard to do it. Unlike Experimenters and Gamers – those using Social Networks just don’t want any overhead to the process. The simpler the social network is – the more it is used.
At this point, I think this is the biggest challenge to META – they are a Social Networking company and they want a Social Metaverse. However, what they want is not as important as what the users will accept and, more importantly, actually use.
Social interaction can be foundational to other uses of technology, but it is not the easiest thing to build initial adoption upon. The memes about the cartoony look of avatars, the obsession about their lack of legs, and the general friction of entering a technical environment just to interact in a way that is substitution rather than transformational is something I think META should consider a little more carefully.
Full disclosure, I’m an Introvert and my social experiences in the Metaverse have been more annoying than enlightening. I’m happy to consume social content, but participation in the Metaverse social arena is something that I have not personally enjoyed as of yet.
At this point, the Social aspect of the Metaverse seems to be more for a unique set of users: Social Experimenters – those that are interested in new ways of social networking. I’m not convinced that represents 1.5 Billion people.
Maybe once more people are on the platform with like-minded interests I’ll find some value – but for now – this is not something that impresses me. it seems at this point that they are in the substitution phase of Social Technology – there isn’t much in the way of transformational utility. Critical Mass is harder to achieve when you also factor in hardware limitations.
I’ll be fair to META though. They do seem to recognize that they need to facilitate off-headset participation and there are ways to interact with the Metaverse outside of having to put on a headset.
Now, for the area that I think can really change META as a company, and the entire way a vast number of people use technology – Workplace and Education.
An area that I do think holds great potential for META is in the area of the workplace and social interactions with purpose – teamwork, education, project work, design work, and meetings across geographies. In fact, with the release of the Meta Quest Pro – this may be the golden ticket for META that might just act as the catalyst or tipping point for the adoption of their hardware and environments.
The reason I think it’s a potential tipping point is that the Meta Quest Pro birings AR into play. Which I believe is a market far larger than Gaming and Social Experimenters in pure VR. I have another video on VR and AR where I go into this in more depth.
Getting AR into the workplace and education is not without some substantial challenges – because in the workplace, and even in education, there is far less tolerance for friction related to getting things done. We will need specific utility across different sectors of activity. In my own classes I have the potential to use more VR and AR – so education may be a good play for META.
Some AR implementation in work/school is already being done with tools such as Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 – a device that allows for collaborative design reviews, walkthrough’s, training, and more.
META definitely has placed an emphasis on collaborative activities in this regard (again, back to their Social Networking origins) and may actually be in a better position to deliver than Microsoft alone. Especially when we see recent announcements related to Microsoft 365 being placed on the META platform – including Microsoft Teams.
This area does have challenges – specifically around tolerance for ease-of-use, and the level of professionalism around Avatars and the way we perceive others within the space. We may tolerate a level of gamification in education, but work is less tolerant of cartoonish abstractions.
The world of work is obviously massive. If even a portion of how we work is transformed by the use of VR and AR tools then those tools will become mandatory for everyone. Workers will use a headset for at least a portion of their work day.
We see this already being the case in high-end Engineering and Design. The technologies are transformational in the way they allow for collaboration on design. In my field – data – this does seem to have the potential to visualize datasets that would be much more challenging to see in 2 dimensions.
The “killer” Application would be meetings. There are a LOT of meetings when people work together to accomplish goals.
While Social Networks are voluntary, the need to meet with others in the world of work is mandatory. There is a demand for professionalism – so cute, legless avatars won’t cut it for the vast majority of business’. Several years ago I attended a conference with the promotion of Second Life as a way to teaching remote classes – even in an academic environment with higher tolerance for the unusual and cutting edge, the idea of learning Physics from an Elf was pretty niche. It never really took off.
Business’ will adopt cutting edge tools and technologies – but only cutting edge that has perceived or proven value. Preferably proven.
If META is able to not just provide a substitute for the webcam and Zoom/Teams interfaces, but actually transform the experience by allowing for photo realistic Avatars with body language representations that can use an expended toolset of design and collaborative objects – that might be the genius application of their technologies.
Only after maturity and development of completely frictionless and transformational technology will we see the use of these technologies in everyday life by the majority of people. That will likely be several generations of hardware and several evolutions of software away.
The future is uncertain, but there is the ability to invest in tools today that can potentially pay dividends later. Mere substitution of what we currently use is an uphill battle, but when we begin the transformational process – then you might just come across as a genius.
I’m excited to watch the evolution of META in this regard. I do think they are further along than they are often given credit for and I’m looking forward to trying the new tools and environments they create in the future – always with an eye to utility over technology – but utility enabled by technology.
