Is it (finally) over for Facebook?
My High School kids took the AP test yesterday. They’re ready. Well most of them are. There’s my group of Seniors at the far table that care only about energy drinks and fighting for the one roller chair in the class — oh and going to the bathroom.
What do they even do in the bathroom?
I’ll never know, but I do know one thing — not a single kid in my class uses Facebook.
I asked them earlier in the week teaching them how all this AI stuff even happened. They do use Instagram, an app that was perfect in its time. The smartphone had just blown up, so everyone was walking around with a marginal camera in their pocket. Kevin Systrom was the guy who invented Instagram. His first App was called Burbn1 and it was for check-ins.
Burbn wasn’t doing so great but people liked posting pictures so Kevin went minimal — one app, all images. App written, he went on a break to Mexico with his girlfriend. Nicole didn’t think their phone vacation snaps looked good enough to share. So Kevin went back to the hotel and built the first filter. He called it X-Pro II and it’s still in Instagram today.
The next day Kevin posted the first Instagram photo from a taco stand (that’s Nicole’s sandal next to the dog):
A star was born. Kevin caught lightning in a bottle. Instagram grew to 30 million users in 18 months.
Facebook — Mark Zuckerberg — saw the threat. Facebook’s mobile app was worse than the crappiest of crappy phone cameras. Instagram’s app was simple, elegant, mobile only and it was beating the pants off FB: 2
So Mark bought it.
He courted Kevin with a combination of money ($1B) and threats. He promised Kevin Instagram would stay independent and he would still be in charge.
Of course that didn’t last — Instagram was growing faster than FB — so Mark took it over, crammed it with ads and a few years later Kevin left. Don’t feel bad for Kevin — choices — he left a rich man, but he lost his creation.
Same story, different ending: Snapchat. Evan Spiegel invented Snap, and when he was 22 Mark came for him too — offering him a mind boggling $3B dollars for his company. But Evan said no. That was the day I started using Snapchat. I remember reading that headline and thinking Evan was my man.
Mark holds a grudge. He couldn’t have Snapchat so he blatantly stole every innovation Evan came up with and he came up with a LOT. Snap was a revolutionary app in its prime: ephemeral chat, stories - yes Snap invented stories! Mark also stole Spectacles — now creepy Meta AI glasses — he’s still trying to get that one to work.
Through it all Evan held on and while the future of Snap is not clear to me — one thing that is clear is that Evan is still running the show.
Mark hasn’t come up with a single original idea since he created Facemash in his Harvard dorm — a hot-or-not website to rank college girls. He’s an ultra competitive, cutthroat businessman and boy did he nail ads, but he’s got no heart, no innovation, no soul.
Mark created an ‘insider’ class of Facebook stock and he owns most of. It has 10X the voting rights of a standard share, so Mark controls the board and can never be fired. With the ad money making machine and no accountability, Mark has gone off on some ridiculously expensive attempts to invent the next thing.
Take the Metaverse - he renamed the company Meta and spent over $80B building it only to shut it down earlier this year without making a dime.
Even though my HS kids are on Instagram, they aren’t sharing pics. IG is no longer a place to share with friends. That happens in private chats now, across messaging apps like iMessage, Signal and WhatsApp.
For instance, here’s Boo. I am fortunate to be treated to steady diet of Boo pics in our family chat. While our dog Lola had her own Instagram account, that was a million years ago.
Boo knows better:
Mark see’s this happening. Another big threat. He may be a tool, but he’s not a fool.
So, Mark bought it.
Shockingly once again he promises WhatsApp’s founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — to preserve the core elements of the app they built (privacy, security, ad-free) and that they will be in charge. The real shock is after what happened to Kevin and Instagram, Jan and Brian fall for it. Guess it’s hard to turn down the big money. Well in came the ads and they both left abruptly a few years later.
AI is bigger than the mobile wave. AI is bigger than the messaging wave. AI is the biggest wave and Mark see’s it bearing down. What’s he doing about it besides shoving AI generated slop into every feed possible?
How about laying off a bunch of people and then telling the ones left they have to run AI training tools on their computers that record every keystroke and also screenshot while they’re working? When jobs went overseas in the 2000’s there were lots of stories of training your replacement on the other side of the world.
How about training the clankers to take your job?
Meta’s AI model Llama was hyped as open source but the industry saw through that and then and then their latest model Llama 4 well — it sucked worse than those first mobile cameras.
Since not much of this is working, Mark is back to his old playbook of bullying his way into a new market by buying every AI company he can get his hand on.
That’s not going great either.
There’s a big tech trial going on down in Oakland this week. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI for the way they converted the company from a non-profit. Satya Nadella Microsoft’s CEO and the last boss I had testified on Monday.
A bunch of juicy docs have come out of this trial including these texts between OpenAI’s Mira Murati (then CTO) and Sam Altman (CEO):
Sam did indeed get fired 3 and Mira was thrust into the spotlight as OpenAIs CEO for 5 days.
Mira is legit. She’s an immigrant from Alabania and so smart. If you ever wanted to understand what’s really powering today’s AI, Mira explains it:
After the Sam ordeal, Mira left OpenAI, and an elite group of AI researchers from OpenAI went with her to form a new AI company called Thinking Machines Lab.
Here’s what she said when she left:
I want to build AI that is safe and beneficial — and I want to do that my way.
So Mark bought it.
Not this time. He sure tried — he came after Mira and her new company, but Mira said No. Mark went nuclear, headhunting every researcher in her company.
Last week Meta announced a dip in their users numbers for the first time in, well in forever. They’ve never lost users. I think it’s a sign and I’m not the only one:
Facebook will not go quietly. Not only because Mark but because network effects. Where else can I go and hang out with an unholy hodgepodge of friends from elementary school to my high school girlfriend to random people I used to work with? I still have to open Facebook once in awhile, and I hate it.
The future I’m looking forward too, is one where we’re done with Facebook, and Mira and her ilk build new ways for tech to serve the humans.
Bourbon with fewer vowels :/ Instagram’s name was a hit — combo of Instant + Telegram.
Meta won this case where the FTC was going after them for monopoly/anti-competitive practices. Did it have anything to do with Mark becoming a Mar-a-Lago fanboy? https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134ftcopeningstatementslides.pdf
The board didn’t trust Sam with the power of AI.