Author : zebethcontrol

Hidden Door wants to turn fiction into immersive roleplaying experiences • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Gaming, hidden door, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

The first season of “House of Dragon” just ended, and I find myself wishing for more. I’ve seen each episode twice already, read through the lore, and even re-watched some “Game of Thrones” episodes. If I had the option to immerse myself in that world and role-play as a dragon-riding Targaryen queen, you bet your ass I would do it. That’s eventually the vision of Hidden Door, a game studio that specializes in narrative AI and competed at ZebethMedia Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield 200 last week. Hidden Door wants to be able to turn any work of fiction into an immersive collaborative roleplaying experience, where players can jump into their favorite story worlds turned into dynamic graphic novels, with text and images being generated based on their choices. Hidden Door is currently testing out an adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” because the story addresses various age groups and the original text is “so banana pants, which is perfect because it’s supposed to be silly and fun,” Matt Brandwein, Hidden Door’s co-founder, told ZebethMedia. What the platform looks like is a combination of Dungeons & Dragons and Roblox, where you have the vibe of a tabletop roleplaying game that allows you and your friends to “conjure” a story together — only with Hidden Door it doesn’t take four hours to get into character. An in-game AI dungeon master serves as the narrator and builds out a world based on the choices you make as you play. (The above YouTube demo is an early development preview, not the final experience, says Hidden Door.) To set up the game, the players can decide what characters, items, locations, tropes and vibes they want to encounter and “it all comes together like the dynamic back of a book, which doesn’t tell you everything that will happen, but it gives you the sorts of things you will encounter,” said Brandwein. When players choose a character type, the AI dynamically arts that character into a simplistic but cute 2D cartoon avatar. So, for example, a character called “Mischief Maker” might look something like Dennis the Menace in the Land of Oz. Once the character is chosen, the story begins and you’re given a challenge to complete, which you can do in any myriad of different ways based on how you choose to move through the game. The AI creates a host of responsively generated non-player characters, items and locations, which can then be collected, traded and shared with friends to make into new worlds and stories, according to Brandwein. “It’s a trope machine,” said Brandwein about his company’s narrative AI. “It’s trained on 2 million stories in addition to being fine tuned on the author’s work. It knows what sorts of things could plausibly happen, but also what’s implausible. And a lot of the work we’re doing right now is to fine tune it to have the right level of surprise, the right level of subterfuge.” Game studio Latitude last month came out with a similar type of game, AI Dungeon, which writes dialogue and scene descriptions using text-generating AI models. But the company has faced headwinds in both content and image generation. Hidden Door says its AI has the content generation part solved at least, and not only because the model was trained on millions of stories. The more the game is played, the bigger the world gets. Artifacts are created out of that play, which you can share with other players who can mix them into their own stories. Hilary Mason, Hidden Door’s CEO, said the creativity of the players coupled with the machine’s ability to riff off those ideas is a breakthrough on the impossible problem of generative storytelling. The company’s next move is to work with a dozen “fairly well known” sci-fi and fantasy authors who are interested in world building and want to loosely define a world for their fans to inhabit in order to “make this more of a community collaborative entertainment experience,” said Brandwein. “Beyond that, the vision we have for this is that someday, you know, if you’re on Amazon, or something like it, you can read the book, you can listen to the book, and then you might just play the book or whatever it is,” Brandwein continued. “Or if you look at Netflix’s game strategy, it’s some very trivial free-to-play game. But why can’t you put yourself into ‘Bridgerton’ and seduce the dude?” Netflix attempted an immersive TV experience a few years back with “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” which gave players an option to choose their own adventure. But that was pre-scripted, only giving you an A or a B at every moment, said Brandwein. Hidden Door recently raised a $7 million seed round led by Makers Fund with participation from Northzone and Betaworks. The startup is testing its current product with a cohort of nine to 12 year olds, and is actively looking for authors to collaborate with for future stories, as well as other potential tech partners with an interest in generative AI.

Skidattl’s augmented reality beacons are ‘like a Bat-Signal for fun’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Commerce, Disrupt, skidattl, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Skidattl wants to use augmented reality to get people to engage with the real world. It’s a story we’ve heard before from AR companies, particularly as they pit themselves against the potentially isolating effects of virtual reality. But rather than chasing metaversal Pokémon creatures on the street, Skidattl aims to use AR “beacons” to show people what’s going on around them. Randy Marsden, Skidattl co-founder, said they will be like “a Bat-Signal for fun” once the app launches. Anyone can make a beacon and anyone can see them. Businesses might set up beacons, which have a one-hour life span, to advertise two-for-one coffee sales, movie times or open bowling lanes. People might shoot up a beacon at a music festival to help their friends find them in the crowd. All a user would have to do is scan the horizon with their phone, or eventually with AR glasses, to see an array of beacons at up to 100 yards of distance, said Marsden. When Skidattl exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at TC Disrupt last week, the company had an AR beacon over its booth to demonstrate what it might look like. “Of course, you can look at a map and say, ‘What’s near me?’ but this pulls you back into the real world,” Marsden told ZebethMedia, noting that he is an Apple alum and a two-time ZebethMedia Battlefield finalist for previous companies — Swype (technically TC50) and Dryft (Disrupt SF 2013). Skidattl’s AR beacons will be anchored by GPS coordinates in the real world. To locate where a user is in relation to that beacon, Skidattl uses Google’s ARCore Geospatial API, which relies on Street View data. “When you launch the app, it’ll tell you to scan the buildings across the street, and within a few seconds, it will know where you are,” said Marsden. “And then those beacons are anchored; they don’t move around.” When people want to set up beacons indoors, Skidattl will also use Wi-Fi signals to help position users against the location of those beacons. Skidattl is still in its angel funding stage and alpha tech stage, but the startup hopes to go to market with a freemium business model — meaning it will be free to use but Skidattl can monetize through premium subscriptions, in-app purchases and affiliate commissions. Like any new social media app, Skidattl will have to battle the chicken-and-egg problem — no one will want to use it if there’s not plenty of beacons already lit up, but there can’t be any lit-up beacons without people on the app. “I think we can kickstart the business side pretty easily by giving them a free beacon,” said Marsden. “On the customer side, getting YouTube and TikTok influencers to talk about it, place ads with ZebethMedia and that sort of thing. And then once we have someone in the app, we can give them incentives for sharing with their contacts.” (It goes without saying, but ZebethMedia ad sales are totally separate from editorial.) Skidattl is currently trying to raise $500,000 to finish the minimum viable product and get the money it needs to officially launch its app at South by Southwest in March, Marsden said.

Google filing says EU’s antitrust division is investigating Play Store practices • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in antitrust, Digital Markets Act, Google, Government & Policy, play store, Privacy SandboxNo Comments

A Google regulatory filing appears to have confirmed rumors in recent months that the European Union’s competition division is looking into how it operates its smartphone app store, the Play Store. However ZebethMedia understands that no formal EU investigation into the Play Store has been opened at this stage. The SEC Form 10-Q, filed by Google’s parent Alphabet (and spotted earlier by Reuters), does make mention of “formal” investigations being opened into Google Play’s “business practices” back in May 2022 — by both the European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Thing is, the Commission’s procedure on opening a formal competition investigation is to make a public announcement — so the lack of that standard piece of regulatory disclosure suggests any EU investigation is at a more preliminary stage than Google’s citation might imply. The U.K. antitrust regulator’s probe of Google Play is undoubtedly a formal investigation — having been publicly communicated by the CMA back in June — when it said it would probe Google’s rules governing apps’ access to listing on its Play Store, looking at conditions it sets for how users can make in-app payments for certain digital products. While, back in August, Politico reported that the Commission had sent questionnaires probing Play Store billing terms and developer fees — citing two people close to the matter. And potentially suggesting an investigation was underway. Although the EU’s executive declined to comment on its report. A Commission spokeswoman also declined to comment when we asked about the “formal investigation” mentioned in Google’s filing (at the time of writing Google had also not responded to requests about it). But we understand there is no “formal” EU probe into Play as yet — at least not how the EU itself understands the word. This may be because the EU’s competition division is still evaluating responses to enquiries made so far — and/or assessing whether there are grounds for concern. Alternatively, it might have decided it does not have concerns about how Google operates the Play Store. Although developer complaints about app store commissions levied by Google (and Apple) — via the 30% cut that’s typically applied to in-app purchases (a 15% lower rate can initially apply) — haven’t diminished. If anything, complaints have been getting louder — including as a result of moves by the tech giants to expand the types of sales that incur their tax. So lack of competition concern here seems unlikely. Last year, the Commission also charged Apple with an antitrust breach related to the mandatory use of its in-app purchase mechanism imposed on music streaming app developers (specifically) and restrictions on developers preventing them from informing users of alternative, cheaper payment options. So app store T&Cs are certainly on the EU’s radar. More than that: The EU has recently passed legislation that aims, among various proactive provisions, to regulate the fairness of app store conditions. So the existence of that incoming ex ante competition regime seems the most likely explanation for why there’s no formal EU investigation of Google Play today. Where Google is concerned, the Commission has already chalked up several major antitrust enforcements against its business over the last five+ years — with decisions against Google Shopping, Android and AdSense; as well as an ongoing investigation into Google’s adtech stack (plus another looking at an ad arrangement between Google and Facebook). Another consideration here is that EU lawmakers have had a very busy year hammering out consensus on a number of major pieces of digital regulation — including the aforementioned ex ante competition reform (aka, the Digital Markets Act; DMA) which will cast the Commission in a centralized enforcement role overseeing so-called Internet “gatekeepers.” That incoming regime is requiring the Commission to rapidly spin up new divisions to oversee DMA compliance and enforcement — so the EU may be feeling a little stretched on the resources front. But — more importantly — it may also be trying to keep its powder dry. Essentially, the Commission may want to see if the DMA itself can do the job of sorting out app developer gripes — since the regulation has a number of provisions geared toward app stores specifically, including a prohibition on gatekeepers imposing “general conditions, including pricing conditions, that would be unfair or lead to unjustified differentiation [on business users],” for example. The regulation is due to start applying from Spring 2023 so a fresh competition investigation into Google’s app store at this stage could risk duplicating or complicating the enforcement of conditions already baked into EU law. (Although the process of designating gatekeepers and core platform services will need to come before any enforcement — so the real DMA action may not happen before 2024). For its part, Google denies any antitrust wrongdoing anywhere in the world its business practices are being investigated. In the section of its filing rounding up antitrust investigations targeting its business, it writes: “We believe these complaints are without merit and will defend ourselves vigorously.” Its filing also reveals that it intends to seek to appeal to the EU’s highest court after its attempt to overturn the EU’s Android decision was rejected last month. (The CJEU will only hear appeals on a matter of law so it remains to be seen what Google will try to argue.) Privacy Sandbox Also today, the U.K.’s CMA has released its second report on ongoing monitoring of commitments made by Google as it develops a new adtech stack to replace tracking cookies (aka Privacy Sandbox). The regulator said it had found Google to be complying with commitments given so far — and listed its current priorities as: Ensuring Google designs a robust testing framework for its proposed new tools and APIs; continuing to engage with market participants to understand concerns raised by them, challenging Google over its proposed approaches and exploring alternative designs for the Privacy Sandbox tools which might address these issues; and embedding a recently appointed independent technical expert (a company called S-RM) into the

Mason raises $7.5M seed round to scale its no-code commerce engine • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello! And it’s Thursday! We are all waiting with bated breath for the latest installment of “Will Elon Actually Buy Twitter or Will He Squirrel Out of It” — the miniseries of indeterminate length and too many twists and turns to enumerate. Supposedly we’ll learn more tomorrow, but who knows. Also, what is time? And if we all leave Twitter in droves, where will we discuss all of this drama? Our fave little story today was Romain’s, covering these adorable houseplants that can be used as air purifiers. Haje is out tomorrow, so a very happy weekend from him, and Christine will look after all your crunchy needs tomorrow. Adios! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Ixnay on the self-drivay: Darrell has had it with all the speculation and calls it: “Truly autonomous vehicles just aren’t going to happen. The evidence pointing to this has been mounting for years now, if not decades, but it’s now tipped the balance to where it’s hard to ignore for a reasoned observer — even one like myself who has previously been very optimistic about self-driving prospects,” he writes. Darrell, we love you, and we hope you’ve never been more wrong. Closing the barn after the horse has bolted: We also have the latest on Elon Musk after his now-famous Twitter office sink video: Amanda reports on his open letter to Twitter advertisers that people have it all wrong about why he is buying the social media giant, but also that Twitter cannot become “a free-for-all hellscape.” Rebecca writes that Musk now says he won’t fire 75% of Twitter’s staff. Avoiding that seller’s tax: Jagmeet writes that sellers on Amazon have to meet certain requirements to sell on the platform, but a startup called Mason is out to change that. The India- and California-based startup secured $7.5 million in fresh funding, led by Accel and Ideaspring Capital, to offer an Amazon-like selling experience but without requiring that “Amazon tax.” Startups and VC There’s a ton of new funds happening all at once, seemingly. Christine reports that Streamlined Ventures, led by Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. Haje reports that Human Impact Capital is a new $50 million fund investing in social impact startups, and Mike notes that Paris-based VC Satgana completes the first close of its €30 million fund to back climate tech startups. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of mega-rounds that put the actual investment funds to shame; it’s a weird world when you can’t skim the headline numbers to figure out whether it’s a company raising a round or a new fund closing. We’re collecting a handful of ’em below. 5 tips for launching in a crowded web3 gaming market Image Credits: Chelsea Sampson (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Every online product requires some network effect, but gaming is unique: Without large, loyal and enthusiastic customers, there’s no way to build products that can be monetized. Play-to-earn games (P2E) are particularly susceptible to this problem, which is why “building a game that succeeds in the long term means developing monetization strategies that can weather market ebbs and flows,” says Corey Wilton, co-founder and CEO of Mirai Labs, the gaming studio behind Pegaxy. In this primer for P2E founders, Wilton shares suggestions for how to approach investors, explains why tokens are not a reliable fundraising vehicle and discusses the recent “shift toward Web 2.0 monetization.” Three more from the TC+ team: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. The New York Post had to do some deleting today after it was discovered that someone hacked into both the newspaper’s website and its Twitter account, Zack reports. The article headlines in question were racist and sexually violent in nature, and the newspaper told ZebethMedia that an employee was to blame for the incident but did not go into further details on how it came to that conclusion. Also, our team paid attention to earnings so you didn’t have to. Rebecca has a look into Ford’s third-quarter earnings, which she reports took a $2.7 billion hit related to Argo AI, which we reported yesterday was being shut down. Meanwhile, over at Meta, Amanda writes that Meta had yet another decline in its third-quarter revenue. And now we have three more for you: Googling: Google Cloud has entered web3 territory with a managed blockchain node service by taking on the heavy lifting there so that developers can do their thing, Ron reports. Meanwhile, Manish has details on a $100 million acquisition the search engine giant made in Alter, an AI avatar startup. On an acquisition roll: Ron also reported on yet another Thoma Bravo acquisition. This time, it and Sunstone Partners announced the proposed acquisition of UserTesting for $1.3 billion. The company plans to combine it with its UserZoom, another company Thoma Bravo acquired in 2021. Get your health advice here: YouTube says it will begin certifying channels for licensed health professionals, like doctors, nurses or therapists, who produce health-related content, Ivan writes.

YouTube redesign gives long-form videos, Shorts and Live videos their own tabs on channel pages • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Creators, Media & Entertainment, shorts, Videos, YouTube, YouTube ShortsNo Comments

YouTube is rolling out a change impacting how videos appear on its platform. The company today announced a redesign that now splits video content into three different tabs on all channel pages — one for YouTube’s traditional long-form content, another for YouTube Shorts only, and a third for Live videos, including past, current and upcoming live streams. The changes will allow users to more easily access the types of YouTube videos they want to watch — a move YouTube says it made based on user feedback. In an announcement, the company said it heard from viewers they wanted to be able to navigate to the kinds of content they were most interested in when exploring a creator’s channel page, leading to this makeover. The update also means that Shorts content and Live streams will no longer be found in the main Videos tab on the channel page — something that could appeal to longtime YouTube viewers who haven’t appreciated the infiltration of YouTube’s short-form content into their favorite channel’s video feed in recent months. However, for those who do like watching Shorts, the redesign gives YouTube a way to direct them to more short-form videos. Now, when users are watching Shorts videos in the Shorts feed in the main YouTube app, then navigate to the creator’s channel, they’ll be sent directly into this new Shorts tab to watch even more Shorts content. This could help YouTube boost its views for Shorts as those users will no longer be immediately lost to the creator’s long-form content, as before. Initial feedback from users on Twitter responding to YouTube’s post about the changes has been positive, as users are expressing their appreciation for giving each type of content its own separate category. The redesign follows another major update to YouTube this month which introduced, at long last, YouTube handles in the @username format. These usernames will now allow creators to identify their channel and interact with their viewers across YouTube Shorts, channel pages, in video descriptions, in comments and more. YouTube says the tabbed redesign is rolling out starting today and will be available to all users across all devices in the weeks ahead.

Amazon accidentally exposed an internal server packed with Prime Video viewing habits • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in SecurityNo Comments

It feels like every other day another tech startup is caught red-faced spilling reams of data across the internet because of a lapse in security. But even for technology giants like Amazon, it’s easy to make mistakes. Security researcher Anurag Sen found a database packed with Amazon Prime viewing habits stored on an internal Amazon server that was accessible from the internet. But because the database was not protected with a password, the data within could be accessed by anyone with a web browser just by knowing its IP address. The Elasticsearch database — named “sauron” (make of that what you will) — contained about 215 million entries of pseudonymized viewing data, such as the name of the show or movie that is being streamed, what device it was streamed on, and other internal data, like the network quality, and details about their subscription, such as if they are a Amazon Prime customer. According to Shodan, a search engine for internet-connected things, the database was first detected as exposed to the internet on September 30. While disconcerting that a company of Amazon’s size and wealth could leave such a huge cache of data on the internet for weeks without anyone noticing, based on our review, the data cannot be used to personally identify customers by name. But the lapse highlights a common problem that underpins many data exposures — misconfigured internet-facing servers that are left online without a password for anyone to access. Sen provided details of the database in an effort to get the data secured, and ZebethMedia passed the information to Amazon out of an abundance of caution. The database was inaccessible a short time later. “There was a deployment error with a Prime Video analytics server. This problem has been resolved and no account information (including login or payment details) were exposed. This was not an AWS issue; AWS is secure by default and performed as designed,” said Amazon spokesperson Adam Montgomery.

Clubhouse’s Paul Davison on Twitter, the impact of hype and what happened • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in clubhouse, EC Media, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Hype, paul davison, Social, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

For most venture-backed social companies, a period of hypergrowth seems like it would be the dream. It means the app broke through the noise of thousands of others, resonated with a mass market of people and didn’t need to spend a penny on marketing. Clubhouse, however, offered a retort to that perspective. The app’s fall from peak, both in terms of daily active users and general fanfare among techies, has been intriguing after its splashy invite-only start. Paul Davison, Clubhouse co-founder and CEO, spoke about changes at the company at ZebethMedia Disrupt last week. “We had a couple of months of insane, silly, unsustainable 10x month-over-month growth,” Davison said. “I think what people might not appreciate is that Clubhouse has kind of moved into all of these different verticals, and they probably don’t appreciate the size of the community and the activity and the diversity and the range and all the conversations that are happening.” He added: “I don’t think hype is good, I don’t think extreme hypergrowth is good for a company. The ideal is to grow at a steady pace.” Let’s not hype up hype Davison described Clubhouse’s “hype moment,” during which the app grew users 10x month over month and took the No. 1 spot at the App Store in Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, Brazil and Italy. While the company was able to use that momentum to raise over $100 million in financing, with its latest known round closing in April 2021, Davison grounded the narrative. The co-founder said that the 10x growth lasted two months and spiked the app’s Sensor Tower metrics, which “shaped the narrative” when downloads began to slow down. In reality, the hype stressed the infrastructure, Davison admitted.

Apple earnings see iPhone revenues up, still short of forecast • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, earnings, Hardware, iPad, iPhoneNo Comments

Sometimes earnings leave you wondering how good is good enough. Take, for example, Apple’s Q4, which finds the iPhone maker beating Wall Street expectations overall, but still seeing an extended trading stock dip after iPhone sales were improved, but still managed to miss the mark. Revenue hit $90.15 billion for the quarter, edging out the $88.9 billion estimates and rising roughly 8% over this time last year. iPhone revenue, too, saw a healthy uptick of 9.6% on the strength of the new iPhone lineup, though the $42.63 figure fell short of Wall Street’s $43.21 project enough to see a dip in late trading. Mac revenues saw double-digit revenue gains for the quarter, at $11.51 billion. The ever-important Services sector, meanwhile, saw a (relatively) modest y-o-y bump to $19.19 billion – making it another category that just failed to miss the mark of $20.10 billion. iPads, which only recently saw a refresh, were down 13% from last year. The numbers, of course, arrive in the face of significant economic headwinds. In a release, CFO Luca Maestri notes, “Our record September quarter results continue to demonstrate our ability to execute effectively in spite of a challenging and volatile macroeconomic backdrop.” Tim Cook, meanwhile, used the opportunity to discuss environment concerns. In a separate interview with CNBC, however, Apple’s CEO addressed inflationary and other issues that stalled a potentially larger overall revenue growth for the behemoth. Cook expained, “We would have grown in double digits without the foreign exchange headwinds.” Specifically, the company was hurt by the US dollar’s strength. He added that the company has joined a number of other tech giants in slowing its overall pace of hiring, saying that Apple is instead doing so “deliberately.”

Meta is in trouble • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Mark Zuckerberg, meta, metaverse, SocialNo Comments

A day after weighing in with its third quarter earnings report, Meta is flailing. The company formerly known as Facebook was in trouble Thursday after uninspiring numbers and an apparent lack of faith in Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision sent its shares plunging by 25%. At the time of writing, Meta was trading around $98, down from $130 on Wednesday. Other tech stocks are in a similar boat broadly. A challenging economic climate and a war that’s worsened geopolitical tensions have sent many tech valuations back to Earth, but Meta’s fall —and the message it sends about the company’s future — is really something. Meta’s stock price is now worth almost a quarter of the all-time high of around $380 that the company recorded late last summer. Image Credits: companiesmarketcap.com Thursday’s situation saw Meta hit a low that its shares haven’t touched since 2016 — well before Zuckerberg’s big and possibly doomed pivot toward a virtual social platform to succeed Facebook. A run of high profile doubts, both internal and external, about Meta’s metaverse probably isn’t helping either. This week, Palmer Luckey — the VR visionary founder of Oculus, the hardware that powers Meta’s headsets — slammed Horizon Worlds as a poor product that isn’t fun. “It is terrible today, but it could be amazing in the future,” he said. The company reported losing over $9 billion this year so far on its Reality Labs division, the home of its aggressive forays into VR hardware and virtual social networking. The company might bounce back, but it might also be reaping what it’s sown for years. Meta managed to sour its billion dollar acquisition of Instagram, a social app that people used to love, by choking the platform with ads at the expense of the user experience. Ironically, in striving to box out the competition and wring as many ad dollars as possible out of the app, Meta accidentally set the stage for the rise of TikTok — an app people don’t hate. Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck. — The Golden Sir (@screaminbutcalm) March 12, 2019 With the Instagram portion of the business not looking so hot lately, Meta has quintupled down on the metaverse without examining if it even knows what users want at all these days. And after changing the name of the company while ruining a perfectly fine word in the process, there are no easy take-backs. Investors seem to be getting the message, or lack thereof. The company is even more of the Mark Zuckerberg show than ever these days — and losing longtime COO and adult-in-the-room Sheryl Sandberg this year probably didn’t help. But if a bet on Meta is a bet on its Zuckerberg’s understanding of where social media trends are going and how to get there first, the once unstoppable advertising beast appears to be shambling in the wrong direction.