The M-pire Strikes Back
This was, without question, the most comfortable I've ever seen Mark Zuckerberg on stage. Over the years, he's oscillated from awkward to cocksure or worse, some combination of the two, which largely seemed to reflect the state of Meta itself. If that's the case, this year's Connect keynote may indicate a company coming back into its own.
Sixteen years ago, when the company was called Facebook and the conference was called f8, my overall takeaway from the keynote was, "I Think Facebook Just Seized Control Of The Internet". While that wasn't quite the height of their social networking powers – Facebook had a "mere" 400 million users then – they were clearly getting there. Confident enough to attempt to challenge Google for control of the web. Depending on your vantage point, it either never fully worked, or worked too well, but it felt like roughly the company's last peak, in confidence, at least.
Two years after that keynote, Facebook bought Instagram – for, Dr. Evil voice: one billion dollars. While many found that crazy at the time, with the benefit of hindsight,1 it seemed more like an acknowledgement that they could no longer build what's next, they needed to buy it. Two years after that, they repeated the trick by spending – Dr. Evil voice: nineteen billion dollars – on WhatsApp.2
In between those two deals, they tried to buy Snapchat, but when Evan Spiegel rejected their offer - for, Dr. Evil voice: three billion dollars – Zuck moved into kill mode, launching a half dozen efforts to end their younger rival. None worked, but by 2016, they finally got the model right – perhaps by sucking it up and owning that copying was exactly what they were doing with Stories inside of Instagram.
Anyway, sorry for the history lesson, but my point is that it has been a long while since there's been this kind of feeling around the company – again, at least when it comes to keynotes. And after a decade in the wilderness searching for What's Next™ – private messaging, crypto, and yes, the metaverse – they seem to have found it. Zuckerberg acknowledged as much on stage yesterday. While he's stated before that they perhaps erred in thinking that the VR (and AR) stuff would get here before the AI stuff, he finally acknowledged that "we've shifted our focus".
I mean, duh. But before this keynote, it wasn't entirely clear that their massive AI bet – no Dr. Evil voice needed, as we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars – was actually going to fully pay off. Honestly, the scale is such that we probably can't be sure for another several years, but the um, vision, seems crystal clear now.
What's wild is that the real linchpin of the entire keynote only came into being in the past couple of weeks! Muse.
Yes, it's early. Again, two weeks! But the early data Meta is seeing is clearly enough to push Zuck all-in here. He kicked off talking about Muse and ended talking about Muse. With a whole lot of Muse sprinkled in between.
Muse. Muse. Muse. Meta. Mark. The four-letter M-pire.
If Facebook was mentioned, I'm struggling to recall it. I think Instagram maybe got a couple shout-outs at most. And WhatsApp perhaps one (in relation to security). Meta has moved on. The social networks and services remain the glue holding the actual business together, but this is a very different company now.
To that end, I thought Zuckerberg's opening address was good! He was cool, calm, and collected. And yes, confident. He was close last year in his attempt to reframe the company around AI, but it was too predicated around the smart glasses. Those are clearly going well for Meta, but they're one endpoint3 – despite Zuck's clear obsession with pushing the iPhone into the background which is still not going to happen any time soon, if ever – AI is the means, and Muse is the harness.
Now the new 'Meta Audio Glasses' – take that, PervPods! – can be another endpoint. And the new 'Meta VR Glasses' another still – take that, Apple! Yes, even the perhaps two-times-too-cute 'Muse Charm' – take that, OpenAI!4
In this opening, Zuckerberg bridged the old Meta (Facebook) with the new Meta (Muse) by saying it has always been about empowering people (while sticking it to the Doomers). I mean, he has said this a lot over the years. But it has always felt a bit hollow, until now. I'm just not sure that using Meta AI to make what many consider to be "AI slop" or "social slop" was really helping people, but you can certainly see how Muse can!
I might also point out that it seems indisputable at this point that Meta's social products, while technically helping billions to connect, had some consequences – unintended or not – that hurt many. Perhaps millions. And while a settlement, legally, isn't an admission of guilt, it's certainly an acknowledgement that they'd like to move on.
But the reality there is that you can't really move on until you give people something else to talk about. Even a full-on name change didn't work. Aaron Sorkin has not forgotten. A true reinvention requires invention. As impossible as it seems now, maybe in 50 years we'll remember Meta as the AI company and not the social media company. Nintendo was once a playing card company. Nokia was a pulp mill.5
I acknowledge that such ideas and commentary will make people angry right now. I get it. A lot of people really, really dislike Meta. Some even hate the company. Even more distrust it, which is obviously a big problem for a product like Muse. Which is why security was such a focus from day one. But that's going to take time.
To hear Zuckerberg tell it right now, they don't even intend to monetize Muse through advertising. That's practically Meta's entire business at the moment! To be clear, he left the door open by noting that their current plan is to take "a small fee" from transactions facilitated by their agents (and undoubtedly to upsell usage credits to the "Whales"), but if nothing else, I suspect that Feed inside Muse will prove too enticing.
But the point is that these are the lengths which Meta is going to try to distance themselves from the old company. Again, they still need those profits, so they can pour them right back into the AI build-out, but those services are more or less in maintenance mode – or rather, milking mode.
Milk, another four-letter 'M' word. Funny that.
"Stay optimistic out there," was Zuckerberg's short and sweet sendoff – again, taking a swipe at the current AI narratives. There finally seems to be reasons to be optimistic about his company once again.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Though I'll just note that the deal didn't seem crazy to all of us at the time :) ↩
2 It's wild to think back to how much money $19B seemed like at the time, and how quaint the amount seems now in the Age of AI. We're seeing talent deals – "hackquisitions" not full acquisitions – happen for more money. ↩
3 One which many, including yes, Apple, will be gunning for soon. ↩
4 Meta was in full-on Godfather take-out-enemies mode, also announcing a partnership with Walmart (and a handful of other partners) days after Amazon blocked Muse. ↩
5 Yes, I'm purposefully avoiding the companies with far more notorious and problematic beginnings for obvious reasons, like Hugo Boss and Volkswagen. ↩