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Zenbane
Zenbane
Honored Contributor
August 22, 2020
Question

Facebook knows, You'll be back soon enough

This thread is about Facebook's overall stance on business decisions and policy changes. The reason this is worth a look on the Oculus forum, is because it very much applies to how Oculus VR will operate. The Facebook culture extends to all of its owned entities.

"We’re not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue"

Earlier this year, Advertisers threatened to leave Facebook over a dispute.

Keep in mind, Facebook's primary source of revenue comes from Advertisers. So for anyone who thinks that Oculus users threatening to leave Facebook will somehow cause change, take notice! If Facebook doesn't let threats from Advertisers - it's main source of income - deter it from a strategy, then what makes you think they'll listen to a consumer that isn't even part of its main revenue stream?

To be clear, I think this is a privilege any company earns by operating successfully. When you have something that everybody wants and needs, then you no longer have to respond to threats. That's a great freedom to have!


Hundreds of companies around the world have joined a
temporary ad boycott against Facebook Inc., but Chief Executive Mark
Zuckerberg says he’s not worried and has no intention of changing its
policies

“My guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.”
- Mark Zuckerberg

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/zuckerberg-on-facebook-ad-boycott-all-these-advertisers-will-be-back-soon-enough-2020-07-01

If hundreds of companies can't bully Facebook in to altering its course, then we can be sure that dozens of consumers will be even less effective when using the same threat tactics.

    15 replies

    wuzp
    wuzp
    Honored Contributor
    August 22, 2020

    Zenbane said:

    Hundreds of companies around the world have joined a
    temporary ad boycott against Facebook Inc., but Chief Executive Mark
    Zuckerberg says he’s not worried and has no intention of changing its
    policies

    “My guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.”
    - Mark Zuckerberg
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/zuckerberg-on-facebook-ad-boycott-all-these-advertisers-will-be-back-soon-enough-2020-07-01


    The operative "blink word" was TEMPORARY.
    Zenbane
    ZenbaneAuthor
    Honored Contributor
    August 22, 2020
    Yep!

    I believe, due to Facebook being a publicly traded company, the goal was to hurt their earnings and reputation in order to cause a dip in their stock price.

    These types of actions against publicly traded companies have unpredictable outcomes. But many companies fear the backlash and potential permanent damage to their stock. Some companies rarely recover, even if it was a temporary situation.

    But as we can see... the plan to threaten Facebook didn't work. Their stock is doing better now than ever.
    edmg
    Inspiring
    August 22, 2020
    Facebook doesn't care about us. They care about our grannies. Because there are far more people who just want to use VR to stay in touch with their kids, friends and grandkids than there are people who want to play VR games.

    And I'm not saying that as some kind of 'Facebook is evil! Waah!' thing, just pointing out the business case for what they're doing and why they won't change their minds. The have the best price/performance in the VR headset market and they have a good business case for the change, so why would they?
    wuzp
    wuzp
    Honored Contributor
    August 22, 2020

    Zenbane said:

    Yep!

    I believe, due to Facebook being a publicly traded company, the goal was to hurt their earnings and reputation in order to cause a dip in their stock price.

    These types of actions against publicly traded companies have unpredictable outcomes. But many companies fear the backlash and potential permanent damage to their stock. Some companies rarely recover, even if it was a temporary situation.


    Case in point... $PZZA (Papa John's Pizza).  I always tell people who ask me about a good "restaurant sector" stock to invest in; to think pizza.  When people celebrate, they order pizza; when they get depressed (or locked down), they order pizza; when wardens want to quell prison riots... they order pizza.  When the Papa John's boycotts began, they only drove the stock down by about $20, to about $37 (2 years ago).  On Friday, it closed at $99.97 after hours.
    Zenbane
    ZenbaneAuthor
    Honored Contributor
    August 22, 2020

    edmg said:

    Facebook doesn't care about us. They care about our grannies. Because there are far more people who just want to use VR to stay in touch with their kids, friends and grandkids than there are people who want to play VR games.



    I think you pulled the trigger too fast on that one. If Facebook only cares about old people (grannies), then how would those old people be able to use Facebook to keep in touch with kids?
    :D

    Spoiler: The kids and grandkids would have to be on Facebook too! lol

    Your contradiction aside, there are tons of kids and teens on Facebook. I interact with them all the time. And you can too, should you decide to join Facebook to see what it is really like as opposed to all that theorycrafting.
    wuzp
    wuzp
    Honored Contributor
    August 22, 2020
    Speaking of grannies and grandkids, has anyone tried Alcove yet?
    edmg
    Inspiring
    August 22, 2020
    The kids on Facebook obviously don't care about being linked to a Facebook account, so if granny sends them a headset so they can stay in touch, they'll just use it.

    Either way, my point remains that Facebook care about spreading VR to billions of normies, not to hundreds of thousands of VR gamers. Which is why whining won't make them change their minds.
    edmg
    Inspiring
    August 22, 2020

    Zenbane said:

    But as we can see... the plan to threaten Facebook didn't work. Their stock is doing better now than ever.


    Facebook is the only place that's ever given me an ad I was actually interested in. I mean, it's rare, and most of them are ads for things I already have ('we see you just bought a new car, maybe you'd like to see ads for cars') or don't care about, but it did happen.

    So advertisers are just cutting their own throats by refusing to advertise there. And Facebook know that too.
    Zenbane
    ZenbaneAuthor
    Honored Contributor
    August 22, 2020

    edmg said:

    The kids on Facebook obviously don't care about being linked to a Facebook account, so if granny sends them a headset so they can stay in touch, they'll just use it.



    Well no, because you specifically said that Facebook only cares about the grannies. That is false even using your own logic. Facebook needs to keep the kids on their platform. Customer Retention.

    It's actually easier to gain new users than to keep existing users. So in order for Facebook to keep the kids on Facebook, then Facebook has to care more about them.


    my point remains that Facebook care about spreading VR to billions of normies not to hundreds of thousands of VR gamers


    I regret to inform you: Gamers are also a normies.

    What Facebook doesn't bother catering to is the subset of gamers who believe they are different from normies. That's more of an identify crisis than anything else.

    Besides, there are billions of gamers on gaming platforms that dwarf VR. Such as mobile and console gaming.

    The funny thing is that people like to claim Facebook is playing a "race to the bottom" with its VR Tech, since Rift-S and Quest are not the highest end PCVR possible. Yet any companies invested in the highest end PCVR hardware... are playing a race to the bottom with ROI.

    Actively pursuing a race to the bottom with income is absurd. There just isn't a real market for the highest end PCVR market. That's why Google and Apple stay away. And that's why Pimax only had about 6,000 backers. lol

    edmg
    Inspiring
    August 22, 2020

    Zenbane said:
    Well no, because you specifically said that Facebook only cares about the grannies. That is false even using your own logic. Facebook needs to keep the kids on their platform. Customer Retention. 


    Now you're just being silly for the sake of being silly. Grannies were just a rhetorical example, as should have been clear from 'Because there are far more people who just want to use VR to stay in touch with their kids, friends and grandkids than there are people who want to play VR games.'
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