There was Logan Paul Vs KSI, TikTok Vs YouTube, and now it looks like Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg is brewing up to be one of the biggest brawls in recent times. Gone are the days when beefing up was limited to social media personalities or brands, now, billionaires are in for the fun and openly mocking each other on public platforms. Truly interesting times we’re living in!
Elon Calls Zuckerberg ‘Cuck’
The war of words took a sharp turn between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg recently when the former took a jibe at Zuckerberg in a tweet on Sunday writing “Zuck is a Cuck” This comes after the launch of Zuckerberg’s Threads which is a direct rival to Musk’s Twitter. Musk’s latest jibe at Zuckerberg came as a reply of a Threads post by the brand page of Wendy’s. The fast-food chain Wendy’s Thread post tagged Mark while writing “hey @zuck, you should go to space just to really make him mad lol” Zuckerberg replied with a laughing emoji on this post which was later shared on Twitter by a user as a screenshot.
Musk seems to be losing his grip while taking shots at Zuckerberg as he suggested a dick-measuring competition between the two. Yes, you read that right! Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s cheap copy of Twitter has become the fastest-growing app in history clocking in 100 million users in just five days since its release. Ever since the launch of this platform, a war has been waged between the two on social and legal platforms. It will be interesting to see what shape this feud takes in the near future. If you ask me, the sexual tension between the two billionaires is just way too high and they should stop and make out already!
It is human to seek validation. Social media validation, on the other hand, gives people a sense of superiority. There’s a reason why people heavily document their international vacations or even a weekend getaway on their social media through stories or posts. Showcasing that you’re living a better life than the average Joe has become the twisted reason why people post on social media nowadays, or at least, that’s what my pessimistic worldview says to me. To add fuel to the fire, social media also has a class divide. The verification badge!
A simple blue tick beside your name sets you apart from the masses. For years, the verification badge on your profile was something you earned by standing out from the crowd. An entertainer, a philanthropist, a businessman, or a content creator amongst many other notable professionals were awarded the verified status on social media. Well, those were different times and the new age of social media has allowed users to buy verification badges!
Meta Verified comes to India
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced on his broadcasts channel that the paid verification system has now launched in India. The US, Australia, and New Zealand were the first countries to receive the paid verification now followed by India, the UK, and Canada.
The verification subscription in India is directly available for purchase on Instagram or Facebook. People can purchase a monthly subscription for ₹699 on iOS or Android. Whereas, users with legacy blue ticks will maintain their verified status. This is a different approach from that of Twitter which decided to yank away the verification status of legacy users in the hopes of turning them into paid subscribers. So, what do you get besides a verified blue tick if you decide to buy the subscription?
After providing a government ID to confirm their identity, subscribers gain access to proactive impersonation protection along with direct access to customer support. Additionally, users also get benefits like badges and exclusive stickers on Facebook and Instagram along with 100 Stars per month on Facebook to support other creators.
Paid Verification: Double-edged Sword
The implementation of paid verification has garnered mixed reviews. The supporters of this subscription model believe that increases the platform’s dependability and openness. This translates to users being more likely to identify between real users and/or impostors. The Meta Verified subscription could lead to solid protection against identity theft, fraud, and fake news.
However, there are also people like me who believe that the service is a class divide between Instagram and Facebook users. The elite hierarchy of a verified badge could breed toxicity among social media users. Some creators on social media often look for shortcuts through unethical bot followers and fake engagement. In a way, Meta has enabled such users by introducing a paid subscription model. Creators who worked hard to achieve a verified status are clearly distraught by Meta’s money-spinning move. It won’t be long before everyone walks around with a verified status on social media and we’re all notable social media personalities!
If you were on the internet in 2021 like most of us were thanks to the pandemic, then you know how crazy the hype around the metaverse was. Touted as the next big thing in the tech world, the metaverse promised an entirely immersive virtual world including futuristic avatars and wearable devices. It was back in October 2021 when Facebook made the announcement of changing its name to ‘Meta’ reflecting upon its goals to expand from a social media giant into the metaverse. Cut to 2023 where it looks like Meta’s dream has lost its momentum if not come to a complete stop. What was called by Mark Zuckerberg the ‘next chapter of the internet’ finds itself lost somewhere in the noise with little to no interest amongst the general public. So, is the metaverse dying?
Zuckerberg pulls the plug
Since 2021 when Zuckerberg announced the Facebook rebranding to Meta, the company has lost a big chunk of money. As per reports, meta lost as much as $20 billion as of December 2022 from its ‘Reality Labs’ segment since its start in 2021. The losses kept piling up to the point where investors started raising concerns about Mark’s approach to this business expansion. Brad Gerstner, whose Altimeter Capital fund owns hundreds of millions worth of Meta shares wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg stating that the company had lost investors’ confidence. People and organizations with major stakes in the company expressed concern that Zuckerberg had lost the focus of his company’s core social media empire to pivot onto a concept that may take years to come to fruition.
As a result, Mark Zuckerberg had to issue a statement revealing that the metaverse was not the majority of what the company was doing. Mark revealed that about 80% of Meta’s investments are driven towards the core business and only about or less than 20% of its investments went towards Reality Labs. Meta’s core businesses include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp Messenger. Mark then added that the vast majority of what Meta does will continue to go towards social media until the ‘metaverse becomes a larger thing’ Zuckerberg was insistent about the fact that communication in 2023 will be different than the computing devices used today. The Meta head had gone on record and stated that he is ‘very optimistic’ about the direction Meta was headed in. Well, that was until 2023 when the AI race took an interesting turn and Meta aims to strike gold in that arena.
It might have not come with major announcements or discourse on the internet, but Mark Zuckerberg has quietly pulled the plug on his metaverse dream. The Meta head quietly buried his ambitious project and redirected his attention towards artificial intelligence. Failures are quiet and success makes all the noise stand true in this case. Chatter on the web suggests that issuing a public announcement would force Mark to admit that he was wrong, which is a big price to pay amidst already plummeting stock value and backlash over mass layoffs. On the other hand, Meta’s attention shift to AI reflects upon the unparalleled potential of the technology to revolutionize the world. So what exactly is Meta’s focus now? Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg shared in a post on February 27 –
“We’re creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area. We’re starting by pulling together a lot of the teams working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful experiences around this technology into all of our different products. In the short term, we’ll focus on building creative and expressive tools. Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways. We’re exploring experiences with text (like chat in WhatsApp and Messenger), with images (like creative Instagram filters and ad formats), and with video and multi-modal experiences. We have a lot of foundational work to do before getting to the really futuristic experiences, but I’m excited about all of the new things we’ll build along the way.”
Meta Platforms Inc recently released a new large language model to researchers. The model, titled ‘LLaMA’ is intended to help scientists and engineers explore the application of AI such as answering questions and summarizing documents. The new model has been developed by Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team which was established nearly a decade back in September 2013.
LLaMA is not ChatGPT or Bing Search alternative, which means it is not a system that users can hop on and have conversations with. Rather, it is a research tool which Meta believes will democratize access to AI in a fast-changing field. In simple terms, LLaMA has been made public to help experts dish out problems with AI language models in general. In recent times, there have been reports about Microsoft’s Bing search AI giving passive-aggressive and factually incorrect responses. LLaMA has been publicised to help solve issues like those.
Meta announced its new language model in a blog post writing – “We believe the entire AI community — academic researchers, civil society, policymakers, and industry — must work together to develop clear guidelines around responsible AI in general and responsible large language models in particular, given their centrality in many downstream language applications. A much broader segment of the AI community needs access to these models in order to conduct reproducible research and collectively drive the field forward.” This means that the company’s focus has definitely shifted towards the AI race from the metaverse.
While the metaverse has been put on the sidelines by Mark, the tech leader was quick to realize the paradigm shift with AI technology and pivoted immediately. In the general context, the metaverse could be signed off as Zuckerberg’s expensive fling that ran its course. However, what makes us curious now is the future of virtual reality which was the backbone of the metaverse.
Despite all the flashy and at times downright dystopian demos of VR implemented in the metaverse, Zucklerberg’s dream did not catch on as he would have expected. So, does the failure of the metaverse actually affect development in the VR space? We’d say yes, but only partially. Here’s why –
The Future of VR
While the metaverse vision relied solely on VR technologies to create an immersive experience for people in a digital dimension, the technology itself was never chained to that limitation. VR as a concept has been around since the mid-1980s when Jaron Lanier, founder of VPL Research started working to develop gear including a goggle and gloves to experience virtual reality. However, the VR headsets as we see them now in the mainstream were introduced by Oculus VR and are the brainchild of Palmer Lucky.
VR has been a growing field in the world of tech for over a decade now and has the potential to revolutionize various aspects of our lives be it entertainment, healthcare or education. The main reason why VR gained mainstream popularity is due to the availability of affordable VR headsets right now that allows people to have an immersive experience at a pocket-friendly price. I remember buying my first-ever VR headset for under Rs 2K from Amazon back in 2019 and watching Avengers: Endgame in 3D, it was an experience like no other!
Another reason why VR has shaped up to become the next big thing is due to its mindful implementation in gaming. VR unlocks the next level of immersive gaming allowing players that they are inside the game. There are a number of companies right now in the world which are working specifically on developing VR-centric games that are impressive, to say the least. VR has the potential to transform the gaming industry in its entirety. Players won’t experience the game as a character sitting in front of a screen but feel like they’re inside the game. This high level of immersive gaming experience could revolutionize gaming and change the way we enjoy games altogether.
Another end of the spectrum in entertainment. The theatrical exhibition of films has taken a hit in the past few years as the audience shifts to OTT platforms for their entertainment. This hints that the audience can and will adapt to changing patterns of consuming cinema including watching in VR. In the future, films could be produced specifically to cater to the VR audience creating an immersive experience of storytelling like no other. This level of stimulation will undoubtedly hook the movie-going audience who are always on the lookout for something new. VR could also help a lot when it comes to education as students could visit monuments across the world in virtual reality or learn about the human anatomy wearing a VR headset.
In conclusion, I would like to reinstate the fact that VR technology has been around well before the inception of the metaverse. While the metaverse depends on VR to thrive, no such limitations are present in VR technology. While the future of the metaverse looks dark, the same cannot be said for VR.
Only a few months back in November 2022, Meta sacked roughly 11,000 employees from its global workforce. Firing 13 per cent of its global workforce made Meta the company to fire the most employees in 2022 followed by Twitter which sacked 5,000 of its workforce. Now, nearly just four months after the massive layoffs, Meta is gearing up to lay off thousands of employees soon.
Meta layoffs
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram is planning to lay off thousands of its employees soon as reported by The Washington Post. The new set of layoffs is said to disproportionately impact non-engineering roles. it is also reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is currently deputising lawyers, financial experts, top executives and human resources employees to draw up plans to deflate the hierarchy within the company. Back in November 2022, Meta cited that overhiring and poor macroeconomic conditions were the reason behind the mass layoff. It will be interesting to see what reason is cited by the tech giant for the fresh round of layoffs.
It is expected that Meta will be citing a similar reason for the layoffs and additional mitigating costs amid falling revenue will also be one of the reasons for the layoffs. The reports reveal furthermore that Meta is considering rather traditional spending cuts by slashing some projects. These cuts will be targeted at divisions across the company and will happen gradually.
As per reports, the development about the upcoming layoffs comes days after it was reported that the company purposely gave ‘subpar ratings’ to thousands of employees during their performance review. On the other hand, Meta seems to be desperately trying to increase revenues with its verified subscription plans.
It was just last year before November when a verification mark on your social media profile was a status symbol. Elon Musk introduced Twitter Blue verification where users could pay a certain monthly fee to gain a verified mark, and the celebrated blue tick became accessible to everyone. The controversial decision to allow every user to have a blue tick by just paying a certain amount was termed the democratization of social media by Elon Musk. Now, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is borrowing a page from Elon Musk and introducing his own verified subscription service titled ‘Meta Verified’
Meta launches ‘Meta Verified’ service
Meta announced yesterday that its launching ‘Meta Verified’ subscription service at $11.99/month on web and $14.99/month on Apple’s iOS. The company will launch in Australia and New Zealand this week with more countries to be added soon. Mark took to Facebook on Sunday night and shared a post revealing the plans for ‘meta Verified’ Check out the excerpt from his post below –
“this week we’re starting to roll out Meta Verified — a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support. This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services. Meta Verified starts at $11.99 / month on web or $14.99 / month on iOS. We’ll be rolling out in Australia and New Zealand this week and more countries soon.”
Simultaneously, a blog post was also shared by Meta where the details of the subscription service were shared. Here are a few benefits users will get with ‘Meta Verified’ –
A verified badge that will help users/creators to confirm they’re the real person and not an impersonator. The verification badge will be provided once the account is authenticated via a government ID
Protection from impersonation with proactive monitoring of notorious users who target people with a growing online following
Easier access to help with common account issues
Increased visibility and reach
Exclusive features which include exclusive stickers for Facebook and Instagram and Facebook Reels with additional free stars a month on Facebook to show support to other creators
Instagram never stops surprising its users with the updates and features it introduces time and again. New filters, background music for a single image or a carousel, reels, close friends for stories, live video, and much more. What started as an image-sharing social networking site has evolved with time and has become a part of our lifestyle. Who would have thought that users could sell their Non Fungible Tokens (NFT) on Instagram.
The NFT integration for Instagram focuses on the term “Digital Collectible” in preference to NFT, given the confusion across the term fungible for plenty of people. The digital collectible Instagram posts will have a “shimmer effect” to allow them to stand out from regular posts in the feed. NFTs will possibly be included in Instagram as standard posts on your Instagram feed. A digital wallet will be connected to let users share digital collectibles and automatically tag the creator and the collector.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri took to their Instagram handle to explain how and why NFTs will be introduced to Instagram. The reason stated by the company is to let their fans support their favourite creators by purchasing digital collectibles.
“The creator economy is incredibly important to Instagram. But one of the challenging things that we need to solve as an industry is how to help creators make a living doing what they love. Right now there are a number of different ways for creators to make money but a lot of them are unpredictable and changing rapidly. Now we think one really interesting opportunity for a subset of creators is NFTs,” Adam Mosseri, Instagram Head, says.
The pilot release won’t fee customers for posting and sharing an NFT. It isn’t immediately clear whether or not Instagram could support NFT from all four chains at launch. As per the report, Instagram will permit a small organization of NFT lovers based in the US to test the feature.
“We’re starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so that creators and collectors can display their NFTs,” Zuckerberg told blockchain entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu. The company would be rolling out augmented reality NFTs, which he described as “3D NFTs” and appear as stickers in Instagram Stories, said Zuckerberg.f
