Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
As Facebook changes its name to Meta (still called Facebook for reading habits), investors are increasingly curious about what the future metaverse will look like.
But Facebook doesn't seem to be able to count on the distant metacosm to save it.
On December 9, local time, Meta announced that its VR world "Horizon Worlds" was officially opened to adult users over the age of 18 in the United States and Canada, which is currently Meta's most iconic meta-universe product.
In Horizon Worlds, Oculus virtual reality headset users can create an avatar without legs to roam around the virtual world.
There, they can interact with avatars of other users and even play games together.
However, in front of Zacker burke and Facebook, competitors in public are far from being familiar with each other.
The most typical is the strong attack of short video applications.
According to the latest data released by Sensor Tower, in October 2021, Douyin and its overseas version of TikTok have exceeded 57 million downloads.
This figure overwhelms Facebook's "Family Bucket" social products (including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger) and ranks first in the list of popular mobile app downloads in the world.
In order to maintain its position as a global social hegemon, Facebook has been trying to "stumble" in order to suppress the growth momentum of TikTok.
According to media reports, Zuckerberg has repeatedly complained to local regulators, saying that TikTok has various insecure vulnerabilities and data leaks.
Not only that, Facebook also copied the short video gameplay and functions similar to TikTok, waiting for the opportunity to seize the market.
In November 2018, Facebook launched a benchmark product similar to TikTok, Lasso, a short video product that is almost identical to TikTok in terms of interface and function.
In November 2019, Facebook's subsidiary Instagram launched the short video product Reels, which also has many similarities with TikTok.
But neither Lasso nor Reels can match TikTok, which has captured the hearts of countless young users on the short video track, which undoubtedly frustrated social giant Facebook.
Meta-universe has become a lifesaver for Facebook, but is it really useful?
In this regard, Shen Sihan, a reporter from the "Business School", had an exchange with Shule, and the poor Dao thought:
Facebook is old, and what it wants most now is to regain its youth.
But the metaverse is not a potion, but may be a poison.
Data doesn't lie.
According to the financial report, the growth rate of Facebook users in the third quarter of this year increased by 6.2% year-on-year, far lower than 11.8% in the same period last year.
According to Bloomberg, American teenagers are now spending less and less time on Facebook, down 16 percent year-on-year.
Although Facebook's total number of users has maintained a growing posture over the years.
But among key young U.S. users, many metrics and percentages of Facebook use are declining.
This just shows that Facebook is old and has entered middle age with its core users.
As a social comprehensive platform, Facebook is basically stereotyped in its core gameplay, and the needs and choices of users have also formed an inertial stereotype, which is difficult to compete with a short video platform with a higher degree of openness and defined by user participation.
Of course, every platform or model is inevitably impacted by the gameplay of the next-generation platform in the state of forming its own stereotypes and user habits (expectations).
Therefore, the function is integrated and copied, and in fact the ship is difficult to turn around.
Previously, Facebook's imitation sniper on short videos can be seen as hurting people with this.
But hurting people can block simple innovation, but it can't kill subversive innovation.
There are many similar cases.
For example, the domestic Weibo once supported the second beat, but it was eventually defeated by the more active vibrato under the stereotype, which is the same reason.
Can Attack the Metaverse have a miraculous effect?
Foolishly, it is obviously impossible to gain the favor of young users by changing the name alone.
The core is still above the positioning.
Its brand image has moved from youth to middle age due to the age of core users.
This is an unavoidable problem on every social platform.
Nor is it possible to increase the funky plugins that young people like, and occasionally fine-tune the foundation and positioning can be solved.
Especially in the face of the next-generation impact of the completely new positioning of the new ecological social application.
Therefore, the key to this name change and attack on the metaverse is whether Facebook can reconcile the needs between the core users who have grown up with it and the new generation of young users.
Only by making great strides to adjust the positioning and not messing around, it is possible to restore the brand to youth.
But the risk is great, and it can also make the potion turn into poison at any time, making the whole Facebook become "endocrine disorders."
In this regard, Zuckerberg is also constantly standing for the meta-universe dream platform.
However, he doesn't just draw cakes on PPT.
Instead, he is using name changes and attacking the metaverse to strike a real rather than a virtual shockwave in the current market.
The landing point is not technology, but employment.
"We hope that over the next 10 years, Metacosm will benefit billions of people, host hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce, and provide jobs for millions of creators and developers."
Behind Zuckerberg's remarks, he is actually using the vision of the metaverse to provide hope for more people with imminent life pressures.
The truth is that Facebook has been in action for years compared to many of its peers who preach Attack on the Metaverse but have no actual action or technology accumulation.
In 2014, Facebook spent $2 billion to acquire Oculus. The completion of this acquisition can be seen as a key first step for Facebook to enter the virtual world.
Since then, Facebook has also acquired a number of companies in the VR/AR field.
According to incomplete statistics, since 2014, Facebook has invested and acquired more than 15 times in technology fields including computer vision, facial recognition, eye tracking, artificial intelligence, AR/VR and so on.
Through years of investment acquisitions and independent research and development of systems, Facebook is now at the forefront of the industry in key technologies such as VR/AR.
Not long ago, there was also news that Faceboo was considering opening physical stores around the world.
According to the people of the project and company documents, the stores will be used to introduce people to equipment made by the company's reality lab division, such as virtual reality, and finally augmented reality glasses.
Subsequently, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the company could not confirm any store plans.
But from any point of view, Facebook's creation of millions of jobs through the attack on the meta-universe is indeed not a lie.
However, the real meta-universe wants boots to land, and it is still not enough to rely on technology and platforms.
Technology is not a problem, and games have stocks, but the problem of concept needs to be faced by Facebook itself.
In particular, the metaverse should be an interesting soul, not an all-encompassing, soulless amusement park.
This will be the biggest deficiency in Facebook's current metaverse wild heart.