I personally think it is wishful thinking. At this facebook is rich enough that even if facebook.com completely imploded they could pivot to another social media platform they own such as instagram, and it is hard to imagine facebook.com imploding completely as it is used across the globe and I can see that even if facebook fell in the english speaking world other regions would still use it.
Both Reid Hastings and Marc Zuckerberg are very capable business leaders.
It will be interesting to see in what direction Netflix decides to expand or if they will just stay in the movie and series business. I feel like they should have bought CrunchyRoll instead of Sony, that's a missed opportunity imo. But since they're trying some game experiments they might decide to buy some game developers? Or a big music streaming company, that would almost fit better with their business?
Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram are very sticky. I don't see them disappearing anytime soon. Facebook has a massive image problem though, so who knows how that affects their VR attempts?
> I think Netflix could still do fairly well as one of N big players in the streaming space.
I disagree. I play for Netflix and Amazon Prime video (that was a cross-sell). I'm not playing for another.
If everything is one one service, then I'll pay for it. That was the original promise of Netflix. But now everyone wants to play that game.
Two services, maybe I'll pay. N services? Screw that, might as well go back to torrenting. And then, why keep Netflix?
Paying for TV shows is _voluntary_. Consumers are willing to pay, but only up to a point. Jerk them around too much, and the consent goes away - not only will Netflix get only a slice of the pie, but the whole pie will be smaller.
I don't understand why Netflix is in FAANG at all other than because it makes the acronym work ... they are a single-purpose service with almost no ecosystem impact. They could disappear and 99.9% of people would shrug and switch to a closely equivalent service. Every other "FAANG" is deeply integrated into complex ecosystems with huge economic impact.
Bummer, I suspect that biased the poll quite a bit. Facebook had an early lead when I first commented. It's on everyone's mind from recent news, so it was going to lean Facebook regardless I'm guessing.
Interestingly, from a physical perspective there's not much difference between saying "fagm" and saying "fact". But one of those is easy for English speakers and one is impossible.
Coarticulated velar/labial consonants exist in other languages, though.
Well, when I left in 2010 it was extremely true. Not even remotely in the ballpark. According to Levels.fyi they pay about 50% more now, but still less than any FAANG.
My impression when I was at MS was that they hire you at a competitive market salary, and their HR claims to do surveys and keep your yearly increases in line with market rates, however it seemed pretty easy for increases to not keep pace with market rate increases, in part because the market rate has increased pretty steadily lately.
I don't think they're the only ones with this issue. Job hoppers can get bigger raises than people staying and climbing the ladder "the old fashioned way".
I'm not sure I agree with you, but it can vary with the time period being considered and for me it's been a long time.
Also worth noting that while many in Seattle complain about housing costs, cost of living is much lower than in the bay area. That was definitely part of my calculus for accepting an MS offer years ago.
The important metric is what percentile of the market band each company targets. The word on the street (blind) is that MS pays median to 60th, while G/FB pay at 90th percentile. Granted with how MS stock has performed from 2016 and onward, actual compensation has been pretty good, depending on when someone joins.
No. I work for a FAANG company at the moment and Microsoft was my previous employer and i can confirm that Microsoft significantly underpays when compared with FAANG.
+1, it's ridiculous and misleading that Netflix is still being included in this list after all this time.
Netflix is a TV company. Their tech is a commodity. An important commodity, for sure, but it's not what makes them valuable. Their critical offering is their reach and programming.
FAAMG (or MAAAM now, I guess?) is a sane grouping of giant companies because their critical offerings and expertise areas are their software and their platforms. I think Google would be totally capable of reimplementing Netflix's streaming services if they needed to, but after years of trying they still haven't been able to fully match Amazon Web Services. That's the difference between Big Company and Big Tech Company. Similarly, it's why Tesla isn't on this list: they're huge and growing and they write software, but their software is just a means to an end, not a valuable platform in itself.
Is their tech a commodity? I knew one of the principals (who was hired away by Uber for an ungodly sum of money) who had spent years writing a lot of proprietary networking code. I don't think that IP is a commodity, is it?
It’s definitely not a commodity in the usual sense that anyone can just buy it. It requires a lot of custom software, and importantly it also requires a lot of negotiations with CDNs and a lot of datacenter buildout to get the requisite amount of points of presence to serve content economically.
But it is a “commodity” in the sense that it’s just a thing that needs to be built to support their product offering, and which other similar companies with similar product offerings have built. Disney+ exists, Hulu exists, Amazon built Prime Video, Google has been operating YouTube for years. If you need to serve streaming video, it’s no longer a groundbreaking feat to be able to do it.
+2, FAANG was coined by Jim Cramer to be a grouping of fast growing tech stocks almost 10 years ago, not a grouping of the largest and most important tech companies. Apple and Microsoft are both about 10x the market cap of Netflix.
And around that time the Microsoft stock had beeen fairly flat for the previous decade. But the Microsoft of the 2010s isn’t the Microsoft of the 2000s stock wise. The stock has grown quite a lot as well since FAANG was coined.
Netflix will be fine; they sell a reasonable, understandable product at a reasonable, understandable price, which makes me most confident in them by far.
The product is getting worse over time due to content providers cutting them off in favor of their own services.
It's a lot easier for Disney and their ilk to build streaming services than it is for Netflix to build Disney's content catalog. Props to Netflix though, they've been punching above their weight in that area.
It's also a lot easier to pirate than it is to sign up for a billion different services. I'd put my money on "Netflix making this work somewhow" over "Cable all over again."
Definitely. A huge boon for Netflix to have been included in this group because of the first letter of its name.
Reminds me of the Dow Jones, which is just 30 somewhat-arbitrary companies, and is basically the sum of the stock prices of those companies (yes, that means a $800/share company matters 20X more than a $20/share company).
Anyone can make a YouTube replacement now. They just own search for video and provide a consistent interface. Hosting and delivering and playing video files is a solved problem.
That's because they've near enough enveloped the future. Chrome is underrated in importance, every other mobile device is based on Android, and YouTube, after almost 20 years, is still state of the art.
Thinking of things this way, Netflix is the odd one out and most likely to fail, because I reluctantly engage with products from those other brands everyday. And I suspect everyone else does too.
Honest question, do you really think that if Facebook disappeared tomorrow anything would change? Considering the complaints about Facebook plague every other social website including Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. That's also assuming another social media site won't rise up to fill that same role (maybe an existing one)?
Would one tobacco company disappearing reduce cancer rates? No, but it's a start.
Every social media company that optimizes for "engagement" (which means addictiveness and the promotion of polarizing and triggering content) is part of the problem but Facebook is probably the largest player here.
These companies are making billions off the collective lobotomization of humanity.
Amazon, Google and Netflix seem to be happy where they are and don't seem to be innovating much; more interested in collecting rents on existing properties. Apple keeps doing what they've been doing for the last 20 years (successfully). Facebook is trying to pitch this Meta thing, which to me sounds like a desperation play and doesn't sound that interesting, but I'm not hip with whatever is going on in social media.
The Metaverse play is just a further development of Oculus, which has gained traction afaik. Will it result in a paradigm shift in computing? Probably not but I can see the fanbase/use cases for oculus growing and justifying the investment.
>Amazon... seem to be happy where they are and don't seem to be innovating much
If you're just looking at the consumer end of it, maybe. but over the last couple years amazon has become one of if not the largest logistics company in the world, and across the full line from supplier to last-mile delivery. it's not sexy innovation like a new iPhone is, but they've been developing a huge moat and as long as customers want quick delivery of their online purchases, amazon is a long ways in front of any competitor.
All the complaints about review fraud or inventory commingling are small-potatoes compared to the ability to do next-day delivery of millions of different SKUs to a large portion of the planet.
Amazon might not be innovator in consumer electrics. But they enter the markets with very good price point. Ofc, margins are lower, but they can make lot up with volume and breadth...
The fascinating aspect of this is what happens when Apple launches its VR / AR hardware. At that point there is going to be an absolutely tremendous hype and re-orienting of the tech view of AR/VR and people will look for the obvious "number 2" which will default to Meta as the only viable player for mass market.
So it means Meta has the chance to be the Android to Apple's iPhone in the VR/AR space. The main challenge to me looks like that nobody can match Apple's silicon for this kind of application so Meta simply won't be able to compete in the same league as far as on-device computing power. Then, philisophically, I don't think Zuckerberg will be able to stomache opening up the Oculus/Quest ecosystem to become the open "yin" to Apple's closed ecosystem "yang". I don't think offering a second ecosystem that is just as closed is going to cut it if they want to get anywhere near what Apple's market share will be. So there's a strong risk this turns out more like Apple Watch vs Android Wear rather than iPhone vs Android.
Whatever happens, it will be pretty interesting to observe.
I think we have out grown FAANG. There are tech companies with moats and great tech that should be included. IE: Microsoft and Shopify. Decline is kinda open ended too, but if we are talking about ability to hire the best talent, I think it's safe to say Facebook/Meta is going to see a decline in talent. Despite their amazing salaries, because of the brand name that's attached to it they won't see as great talent anymore.
I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legally. Now its disney, hbo, prime, whatever. Screw all of this.
True, but the price seems a bit lower (for now). A fully loaded cable account back in the day for me was $180 (including internet).
Now days you can get internet for $50 or $100 (depending on location, speed etc).
Then if you wanted say 5 of the various platforms, that's going to roughly be $50 to $70 more. So that's still a likely savings.
And on top of that, all new movies are basically being PRODUCED by these networks, so for the most part you don't need a theater (or their prices).
And on top of all that, instead of just fully subscribing to all of them, just get one at a time. Want the new Dexter series, get Showtime. Done with that? drop it until season 2 is out.
So it definitely can be a lot cheaper than the old days.
I haven't had a cable subscription in years. I think almost 5 or 6 years now. It's been a combination of streaming, movie rentals (streaming), and BitTorrent downloads.
And yes, it definitely can be cheaper if you willing to actively manage what subscriptions you need and don't need one month at a time.
Is it even close to that? You can bundle a ton of services and still come out cheaper, plus you avoid ads. The biggest difference is also that you can mix and match services at will, so if you arent using one, you can just drop it for a few months.
Its significantly better than cable TV still. I also dont get people reminiscing about one streaming service dominating, we shouldnt be wishing for monopolies. Everyone coming out with their own platform should drive up competition and give us better quality services
100%
It's worse than the old days of only having cable and having to pay a small fortune. I'm not going to pay the same (or more) and then have to jump around between 12 different apps.
We literally went back to cable because other than the ideology, it wasn't beneficial. For the streaming services I do want, I can actually order then through Xfinity and keep things simple.
I recently stayed somewhere with cable and relatives were watching content for the holidays. I was reminded of just how obnoxious having 30+ minutes of ads for 1.5 hours of content is. I’d rather just not have any content.
Yeah I can't watch anything with unskipable ads anymore. It's just not worth it. The one exception is live sports, but that's not soo bad because there are timeouts anyway. I just hit mute when the ads are running.
I watch NFL RedZone, which jumps game to game to follow the action, with no commercials. Obviously that only works when you have that many games going at once. (Also ironically one of the reasons why I switched back to cable, as it really wasn't on the streaming packages that made sense for us)
I agree it's not perfect. I was just tired of having to train an ML model and spin up a 24-node Kubernetes cluster just to figure out what services I needed to watch the particular combination of shows my wife and I like.
yeah pretty much, I've even found myself pirating things that are actually on the services I pay for because playing a file is just a better user experience
I also find collecting to be satisfying, there's something nice about knowing that Netflix can't just decide to take Arcane away from me
Other advantage of piracy is that you can actually get the quality you want.
In Australia I can’t get anything better than 1080 for some unknown reason, it’s not because it doesn’t exist in higher quality - torrent sites often list 4K resolution files. Presumably it’s the potato-quality internet in this country.
Clint Eastwood did like 90000 movies, why are there only like 3 on Netflix? That but for every actor. Its like on-demand now rather than a catalog you rent.
For this reason, I do have Netflix DVD subscription along with Netflix streaming. At least until now, I feel that there is still vast catalog of movies available to choose from their DVD service unlike their streaming one.
Obviously waiting for DVDs to arrive is a hassle in comparison to watch-at-any-time streaming but that's ok tradeoff for the freedom it gives me to chose a title to watch from its vast DVD and Blue Ray catalog.
I used to be a Netflix DVD customer until last year (so roughly a decade or so?). But between the shrinking catalog and poor quality control (broken or unplayable discs), it became too much. I cancelled my sub and spent the $15/month buying Blu-Ray discs that never get taken out of the catalog. I get them faster (Amazon shipping is far better than NFlix), and since they're new, I rarely have any playback problems.
They're obviously letting their DVD back catalog rot. I resubscribed for a while during early pandemic but so much is just not available. So, yeah, I just buy DVDs from time to time or pay for a la carte rentals.
You should look into how movie licensing works on Netflix, or any network like cruise ships, or airplanes, for example. Each movie is owned by some company that will license it out for a fee, based on length of time and estimated audience size.
Yeah it’s funny I never watch movies on Netflix anymore. I need to rent or buy on Prime Video because the selection on Netflix is basically nonexistent
It's not an exaggeration - back when Netflix sent out DVD's by mail it WAS like having a Blockbuster in your living room (since Blockbuster didn't do streaming)
Does anyone use it? I am thinking that people are so accustomed to immediate online gratification that waiting a day or three for a DVD in the mail is just not something a lot of people will do anymore. That means you are going to have to think ahead about what you want to watch, and plan a time to do it, rather than just flopping down on the couch and surfing to find whatever catches your eye.
And many people don't even have DVD players anymore. I don't.
Back in the day, people had these things called "lives" with irl friends and loved ones. Back then, watching a movie was a special thing you did that brought people together, they didn't need to binge 10 hours of content every night. A few movies a week was plenty.
Part of why it's niche is they basically abandoned that line of business. Remember that they even tried to spin it off into its own separate company, and only changed their minds after a huge backlash.
Many companies fail to adapt and stick with old business models. Netflix did the exact opposite and took their dvd business behind the barn and shot it in the head.
I do. There are a bunch of movies I have on my list that fall into the one day I want to watch this category. I do have the cheapest plan because they closed the Chicago-area distribution center and it was hard to get enough DVDs per month with shipping times for anything more generous to be cost-effective.
They still mail dvd's. I have a coworker who still uses their mail plan. I kinda considered it silly at first by now I'm thinking this is the way to go. It's relatively cheap compared to renting movies via amazon etc. He gets them fast. Blu-ray quality is better than streaming in some cases.
> Blu-ray quality is better than streaming in some cases.
The wording here sounded a bit off to me here; I read it as "usually Blu-ray quality is worse or the same as streaming quality but sometimes it's better" while I think what you probably meant (and would make a lot more sense) was "usually streaming is just as good as Blu-ray but sometimes the streaming quality is bad and a Blu-ray is better".
Is the latter what you meant?
Though there is also the possibility that there's a 4K version of a movie available to stream but not released on Blu-ray. Maybe that's what you referred to?
Blu Ray quality is always better than streaming, by an order of magnitude. Blu Ray 4k has a bitrate of between 92 and 144Mb/s[1], Netflix bitrate at 4K is around 16Mb/s[2] - the resolution is the same but online streaming platforms will need to use loads of compression or most of their user base would not have a fast enough connection to watch video in 4K.
Full HD 1080p bitrates are a similar story, Blu Ray is much higher than streaming (36Mb/s vs around 6Mb/s, respectively)[3][4].
You're right of course that given the same resolution, a Blu-ray will have a higher bitrate but to elaborate on what I was saying:
- The perceived streaming quality may match Blu-ray because the bitrate is high enough that humans can't tell the difference anymore. This is especially likely to be the case is the content isn't challenging.
- The perceived quality may be higher than Blu-Ray because 4K is available for streaming but not as a Blu-Ray release. So the comparison isn't 1080p streaming vs. 1080p Blu-ray but 4K streaming vs. 1080p Blu-ray. If you plot perceived quality vs. bitrate against each other for multiple resolutions, you usually find that it makes sense to increase resolution at lower bitrates than you might expect. I'd honestly expect that 16Mb/s 4K would look better to viewers than 40Mb/s 1080p. Plus, 4K is usually encoded using a more modern and efficient codec than the ancient ones we use for 1080p Blu-ray.
But note that I'm talking about perceived quality here. Higher bitrates might lead to higher computed quality metrics like PSNR and SSIM but past a point, those metrics no longer have any correlation to human perception and that point is lower than you might think.
I get your point, just to play devil's advocate though: up until a few years ago, there was an often repeated argument that "the human eye can't see more than 30fps" (it was used to justify the fact that many console games were capped at 30fps back then)... Today, many gamers use a 144hz monitor and would never go back to a lower refresh rate.
I wonder if the same story will happen with regards to lossy video compression, I mean perhaps, once our tech will be so much better that we will be able to use lossless formats for video, people will look back at the formats we have today and think that they look bad.
Remember VHS? I used to think they looked alright back then :-)
I think that the lower adoption of Blu Ray vs. streaming is purely due to convenience, not quality. Most people don't want to deal with physical media. In the same way that uncompressed audio is better than Spotify and similar services, yet almost no one buys audio CDs any more.
In Audio, there are now services that let you download uncompressed and/or lossless audio (Bandcamp, Beatport etc.), they are not as mainstream as Spotify but they are moderately successful and have their place in the market.
I wonder if the same thing could happen for movies: offering higher quality downloadable movies, without the physical medium. Perhaps cinephiles could be interested. Maybe it will happen when average bandwidth, at least in the developed world, approaches the equivalent of a 4K Blu Ray bitrate: no one wants to wait for a long download to end, people want just-in-time streaming.
(Note: Blu Ray, unlike Audio CD, is not lossless, it's just that it's got much less compression than the typical streaming services).
I don't think the claim that the human eye can't see more than 30fps was ever supported by evidence, it was just "common knowledge" like other falsehoods such as certain parts of the tongue only detecting certain tastes. I think it was actually based on the minimum frame rate necessary for a human to perceive motion instead of a slide show. Scientifically, a quick Google indicates that humans can see up to around 90Hz for more normal cases and 500Hz for a specific edge-case [0].
When it comes to video compression though, industry practice is largely based on the result of user testing. There are well-controlled tests where a bunch of people are put in a specific test environment and shown videos encoded using different parameters and there are larger scale A/B tests where a streaming platform will tweak parameters and see how they affect metrics like time spent consuming content. So I'm confident that the compression of today matches the users and hardware of today.
However hardware can change and I expect that's what will drive increases in video quality. For example the encodes of today are biases to some extent by the fact that people watch videos on tiny screens like phones or tablets, which are likely a bottleneck for quality perception. If people start consuming more content on say VR headsets, streaming platforms may see the need to increase quality. 8K is also a possible driver (especially for very large displays).
Connectivity is also a big deal. Lossless music is possible because the bitrate is relatively low but streaming 4K blu-ray is out of the question for many people at the moment. In the future though it's definitely a possibility.
Yes I mostly meant the latter but like you said, occasionally there are 4k streaming versions when there is only 1080p on blu-ray. Most of the time I don't feel the 4k versions are that much better looking though.
Sound is also mastered differently on blue rays than on streaming - streams are optimized for TV and phone speakers and maybe headphones, Blu-rays have home theater quality sound.
I only have Netflix disc rental (blu-ray, one disc out at a time, costs about $10/month).
The library is huge and goes back decades. There are usually good user reviews at the Netflix web site for guidance. I suspect there are thousands of theatrically released movies that Netflix only offers on disc, not streaming.
In the last ten years, I've rented almost 900 movies (including a few TV shows like Breaking Bad) on disc, so that's well below $2/rental. I live about 50 miles from the nearest distribution center, so turnaround is almost always just two days, because the post office scans the returned disk when I post it, so Netflix sends out the new one the next day, even before they receive my return. They did pull a fast one a few years back by silently stopping outgoing shipments on Saturdays, but I live with it.
Discs have great resolution, often have bonus features, and almost always have closed captioning, which I appreciate more and more as I age. And the credits don't get reduced to a thumbnail on screen so the next show can be promoted. And I don't have to log in, or enable wi-fi on my TV.
I use an old PS3 as my blu ray player, works great with a Logitech remote control, supports HDMI output. I also have a blu-ray external disk drive for my laptop if I'm on the road (only about $100 as I recall).
Since Netflix is primarily responsible for putting Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and various local video stores out of business, I'd be really pissed if they ended the disc rental service.
> Discs have great resolution, often have bonus features, and almost always have closed captioning, which I appreciate more and more as I age.
Don't they get scratched these days? I remember the DVD days of Blockbuster, and also thinking "DVD as a technology is just not ready for rental" every time I got a disc that was scratched and/or had sticky stuff glued to it.
Nope. Out of those 900 discs I rented, I've only had to return maybe 2 or 3 as unplayable, and Netflix will immediately send out a replacement or the next disc in your queue, without waiting to receive the return.
The DVD service had pretty much everything as far as I can recall. So streaming + DVD was a pretty complete offering with balanced convenience and catalog.
I figured that by inside your living room they were referring to streaming rather than to disc rental. I agree that disc rental services (regardless of provider, in my experience) have very good selections.
̶A̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶U̶K̶,̶ ̶N̶e̶t̶f̶l̶i̶x̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶n̶t̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶i̶c̶e̶.̶ edit: I'm mistaken, they used to. There's just one provider left here that does (called Cinema Paradiso).
The early streaming catalog was pretty huge compared to what it is today. They were the only name in town and there wasn't anywhere for IP rights holders to pull out and park their content instead, so there was a lot of TV shows and movies from major studios on the streaming service. DVD service had seemingly everything every made into a DVD.
From what I recall from those early days though is the streaming catalog was constantly shuffling what was available. You could bookmark some movie you wanted to watch, and then a couple weeks later, it suddenly wasn't available anymore - 2 months later it would return.
Certainly convenient though if you didn't care much when you saw something.
>There was never a time when you could name a film and expect it to be on Netflix to stream.
That's not what your parent comment was suggesting. It was saying that Netflix's streaming collection was the same as Blockbuster's physical DVD collection, which was big but not unlimited (i.e. "every film you can think of")
The GP comment referenced the netflix "subscription", not streaming. Netflix used to have the content brought to you on DVD if it wasn't available to stream.
They actually still offer the DVD service which has a much broader selection (basically any and all new releases just like RedBox plus a lot of stuff from the past 20-30+ years) but it's basically a stand-alone service now that costs between 7.99 - 14.99/month depending on how many simaltaneous DVDs you want to have out and the format (DVD vs Blu-ray)
The only reason I still have Netflix is because it's essentially free on my satellite TV package - I think I pay £2 extra a month because it's mostly covered by their "on demand" package, which I wanted anyway.
Netflix has a huge amount of content with pro paedophile tendancies. So many of their shows have underage sex or themes thereof. I have yet to see anyone catalogue these, only point them out in favourite shows.
(Aware of the cuties debacle, but this is a rather overt example, aforementioned are sometimes subtle.)
There's really odd undertones in a lot of Netflix shows
Big Mouth (a cartoon) is about child sex
Emily in Paris, character lead has sex with a 17yo on screen.
There are more, I just can't bring them to mind at the moment. Perhaps I should begin to document them.
Hmm... Black Mirror (the Netflix episodes) had child sex in, End of The Fucking World had child sex in it; although both with negative consequences so poor examples.
Maybe it's coincidental, but it is something I've started to notice more and more.
Keep it in mind next time you watch some shows on Netflix and perhaps it will stand out.
Yeah and have you noticed how the industry doesn't really want you to watch old stuff? Obviously they want to keep peddling new movies and series, so it does make sense, but I think it should be easier to find old classic movies. I often have to resort to torrents for this reason alone.
Friends and Seinfeld regularly make headlines for having their syndication rights sold to Streaming Service A or Streaming Service B for $100 kajillion or whatever.
But surely it makes more sense to peddle old movies and TV shows because you've already made them. Isn't that why content creation is so lucrative - you make it once and then sell it for years and years?
Well, streaming services are being balkanized at such a rate that soon most of the content on each service is by the company the runs the service. That is, if it isn't already.
It seems they are following the McRib model. Taking it off the menu for awhile probably generates more views overall than simply leaving it on all the time. Plus you can license it out to another streaming service while it's off yours.
That's why I still believe in owning physical media (applies to both music and movies). It's the highest quality available at the time (at least until a higher-res version comes out), and can never be updated/censored/"remastered" or otherwise removed from my library.
I was taking stock of all the streaming services I have recently (too many now) and realized Netflix is one I can easily do without. I'm not super into their originals and many movies I do want to watch aren't on the service anyway.
Netflix is also the most expensive service that I am subscribed to. Netflix is €14 and Amazon Prime is only €6. I basically only watch Netflix for a few of their originals (which are arguably aren't that great).
All of that is way cheaper (currently) than cable.
The biggest problem is finding what you want. Need a TV Guide for streaming, so I can search for say "The Martian", and it would tell me "This is on netflix in your country", or "this isn't available on subscription, but you can rent it on amazon for x.xx or buy it on apple tv for y.yy"
It does, but Netflix is the one provider (that I know of) that's decided to entirely opt out of Apple TV integration, so I can't add any of their shows to my universal queue and have to specifically switch to Netflix to see what I'm in the middle of or want I to watch next.
I have a premium subscription but end up forgetting to watch Netflix because they won't integrate with Up Next. I pick something from my queue - I mean you usually watch TV when your brain is fried and it's not going to remember everything. Don't know why they're so adamant about this.
I’d really like apple tv to stop showing me things on streaming services I don’t have, and at the same time not show me the options grime the ones that I do.
Yup. Apple TV for most things and Just Watch for obscure stuff or if there's a chance it could be on Netflix. Just Watch has some major blindspots. I have had multiple searches that return wrong titles.
The biggest problem for me is that my local cable company is the cheapest/best internet provider. So, no, it's not cheaper for me than cable. Internet without cable is almost the cost of the "bundle". (it's evil) I just have cable on 1 of 4 TVs, but still.
Also you can't get most streaming content on cable, or the sports content I get on cable without 4 streaming services (ESPN+, Peacock, Paramount+ & Hulu).
So I've got a cable package w/ sports + a couple streaming services. Sometimes I'll pick one up for a month or 2 and drop it just for something I want to see. Sometimes I rent something from Amazon.
It's just a mess.
But the search is pretty easy. My Rokus, Amazon sticks, or even cable box search fine for me.
Tivo has been doing this for years. I can search for a show, see if it's live, upcoming in the next couple of weeks to record or if it's available on Amazon/Hulu/Netflix/Vudu to stream or buy. Then just click it to go straight there.
Also has a nifty feature where you can list all available episodes of a show across all seasons and it will mix in your live recordings with streaming options. I honestly don't know why Tivo doesn't get a lot more love. Cable when you aren't paying per-TV fees for boxes is pretty great. Just a couple of bucks a month for a cable card in the Tivo and then you hook up Tivo Mini units on all of the other TVs in your house to access the main box.
Still you have to go out of your way AND spend money, vs just opening your favorite torrent tracker, searching for whatever you want, and choosing the quality/codec/language. I've honestly never understood the appeal of not pirating.
if you choose to go this route, jellyfin is a great privacy-respecting media server. plex is great, but requiring an email or third party account on a self-hosted app is just weird.
A show I had one episode left of went off Netflix on 1/1. I tried to find it EVERYWHERE, I even downloaded iTunes on my PC. “Not available in your region” left right and center. I luckily found a torrent and it was legitimately the only way I could find the content beyond buying DVDs on eBay.
I was living in Ireland for a little while and wanted to watch Game of Thrones. At the time, piracy was literally the only possible way to watch it; there was no legal avenue whatsoever (including purchasing cable from HBO, etc) that included it.
That’s crazy. Would a VPN work? I think it would have for me, since my show was available in the UK, but I was not really into buying and setting up a VPN when my wife wanted me to just find the damn show.
VPNs and cloud services' IP ranges are mostly blocked nowadays (by AS number and so on). You can setup your own wireguard vpn running e.g. on a Raspberry Pi on someones cable Internet, of course.
I had netflix from 2003 to 2020, and still got DVDs until 2018 when I moved to an area with broadband. It has been a ride: from it's rapid decline from having all sorts of art-house films (Preminger, Castle, Fassbinder) on DVD, to having almost nothing, to it's near 100% self-generated content which is largely meh. But those first years were epic. I must have watched 800 films the first year, limited only by USPS latency.
It's not illegal to download movies/music from the Internet in most jurisdictions I know of (Europe). It doesn't extend to computer programs though (i.e. using them). It's also usually illegal to make copyrighted (materially) media available for others (outside of group of family/friends), so torrents are tricky.
But it was quite a success for RIAA/MPAA to stick a label of criminal to everyone who downloads free audio-visual content even if it's not true. Though, let's not aid them in their quest by throwing sentences like 'illegal content' too frequently around.
Getting prosecuted for downloading material or using it is rather rare. Unless you are a business. But sharing it is really messy which is why I don't really do torrents anymore. Not that I download much anything.
My big issue with the Netflix model is that I'm subscribing to a content smorgasbord where the only thing they have in common is the distributor. With Disney+ at least I know I'm getting specific brands (Marvel, Pixar, etc).
My only problem at this point with going back to piracy is that the torrent sites I used to rely on are dead, and if there's a modern replacement for Covenant that actually works then I don't know what it is.
Covenant on Kodi was the first and last time I actually felt like TV was in the future.
A streaming subscription is much cheaper than a cable subscription, no? If you're a very heavy consumer of streaming video, doesn't it make sense that you'd pay more? I don't see why anyone should expect to get to stream everything they could want for a minimal monthly fee.
Having to switch apps is a trivial inconvenience. Seems to me that price-point is what we should be focusing on, and I'm fairly confident things have improved greatly.
More generally, I'm sceptical of any argument that laments the lack of a monopoly.
Absolutely not. I am absolutely confident of that statement. One box of drives, a small machine to act as a Plex server, and VPN is all you need. Pre-made, high quality tools exist to automate everything. It's almost completely friction-less.
Pirating is easier, better, and faster now than it has ever been. The push to splinter streaming services is only speeding up its adoption, again. Cable is the old cable, streaming services are the new cable, but with more barriers and more difficult setup.
I'm not sure who downvoted you, but I cannot agree more.
For giggles, I just went ahead and priced this out:
One-time costs:
* Plex Pass: $80
* NZB indexer access: $10 (for 2 or 3)
Ongoing monthly costs:
* File server (three-year deprecation): $55
* IPTV: $15
* Unlimited Usenet account: $3
This took an afternoon of setup, but has just worked since. Heck, the other day I discovered a new season of a show had apparently been released – because it completed downloading and filled Plex overnight.
I had been using Plex for many years and got sick of the way they try to force things like podcasts and web shows on you. I knew that advertising and library scanning was on the way if it wasn't already there so I switched to Jellyfin a couple of years ago. I have a number of friends and family that use my server as well and none of them have complained.
I tried Jellyfin. Although it is great for an open source project, it lacks polish. Especially on the android TV app, there are multiple obvious problems. I encountered too dealbreakers within the first half hour of usage:
- Resume does not work reliably
- Subtitles are ugly and un-configurable
I will keep monitoring it from time-to-time, and switch from Plex as soon as these 2 problems are fixed. Thanks for recommending, I have been on the lookout for such an app for a long time.
I bought a one-time Plex pass, so there's no ongoing cost. I've yet to see any significant reason to change away from it yet. Is Jellyfin better beyond the price?
I picked up Thundernews when there was an "unlimited for $4" sale going on, and have used it ever since. Keep an eye out for their sales, because they don't seem to expire them. They resell UsenetExpress so pick up a block account or two from another provider for fills as always.
Before, we used piracy because the media wasn't easily accessible (physical media). I now see piracy having an uptick in the future because the media is all paywalled. Five years ago, anything you wanted to watch was on Netflix, Hulu, or TPB. With the success of those platforms, all the IP holders have started their own streaming platforms which is great, but it's lead to a massive fragmentation of the market. No one is going back to paying those cable prices of $120+ a month for content by signing up for all these services, so piracy it is.
The thing that bothers me is that the subscription services cannot give full attention to the quality of their apps on all devices. Un-pausing HBO Max on my Roku Plus only works 50% of the time.
And don't get me started on Netflix auto-preview (which cannot be disabled on my device).
There's a site I've come to really appreciate, justwatch.com which is a great way to see who (if anybody) has a particular movie or TV show available. What's nice is that they include the library-based streaming services like Hoopla and Kanopy. I have a 2/month DVD Netflix subscription still the queue for which I use as my master to-watch list, but I'll check the top few movies on the list from time to time to make sure I can't watch them with one of the streaming services I already have.
How many of these people complained about the cable bundle? I dropped cable and have a few streaming services and save $50+ a month. (No, I don't have live TV which would bring it back up to close to my previous rate.)
Same, I'm one of them. I now donate to the developers of the *aar web apps instead.
I had Netflix and Prime till recently in an effort to promote the defragmentation of streaming services as a show of unity but, its getting worse. And these guys do not need my money while the service they provide gets worse and worse.
Yeah, I have completely reverted to piracy, due to those reasons.
Also, many of these platforms made the strange decision to not accept subscriptions from locations outside the US in the beginning. I tried to subscribe to Disney+ and HBO max when they started, but was denied due to location.
Probably works now, but I don't care. They had their one chance.
I don't think people will stop using the Google search bar. I don't think people will stop binging shows on Netflix. I don't think people will stop ordering crap on Amazon. I don't think people who use iphones and macbooks will stop buying iphones and macbooks.
Hard for me to see how it wouldn't be FB/meta. They're betting the farm on something unproven / creating new habits / maintaining habits that seem to be waning.
Facebook has a history of getting first or buying into new social spaces. Gaming and facebook will be important going forward. I would bet in them getting bigger.
The cloud computing fad could go away and Amazon would still be the #1 retailer.
Google, Microsoft will get bigger probably more government contract related.
Netflix is in the worst poor position. There costs for high end production are extremely high because they have to overpay for top talent. So they take years to continue a series or cancel successful ones because actors want raises. The availability of fresh existing shows keeps going down while costs go up.
Decline doesn’t require people to stop using Google search. It just requires a lack of growth, and Google isn’t really doing much of anything innovative. At least FB sees stagnation as a threat and is responding accordingly, Google seems to have its head so far up it’s own bureaucracy that it can’t execute effectively anymore.
I think Apple and Amazon are the only 2 that won't decline. I'm a little on the fence with Google because of phones and maps, but that's kind of all they have going on.
Ok, I'm also probably wrong about Facebook, but I so want to be right! :-)
On a related note, I genuinely think that Meta/FB will be one of the first companies that goes through a Big Oil kind of a break-up within the next decade. Most likely will involve the de-merger of Instagram/WhatsApp from FB and maybe Oculus. Its just a privacy nightmare at this point.
Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-commerce sites, lots of bad press, Governmental attacks, and unionization. Google prints money on search and I don't see enough people swapping to Duckduckgo to bring them down.
Amazon is also kept up by AWS, which who knows if one day that is spun off.
The strongest signal that Facebook will fall is the recently publicized trouble they're having in hiring people. I expect that to have rather strong knock-on effects... 10-15 years down the road. For example if VR turns out to be as big as everyone says and FB/Meta/whatever are only able to put up a weak offering. I tend to agree that they'll be harder to kill than a lot of us wish.
Do they really? It seems to be blown up by media. Talented people are still applying in droves for a job at FB. The competition has definitely increased with good options out there for candidates but hiring trouble is bit preposterous.
I guess I could be wrong, but I remember reading that they were having to give even higher offers than other SV companies. That indicates a real, widespread reluctance to work there.
For me, overwhelmingly the strongest signal is that they appear to be going all in on what is to be a widely used social interaction platform that's more-or-less explicitly banning sex; when that's been a primary or secondary driver for so many new internet/tech platform things.
Unionization is no threat to Amazon. Their margins and hence their shareholders maybe (briefly), but that's just fine and won't affect their ability to be successful. It'll also push them towards further automation on the medium and long term time horizons.
That would in turn alleviate a lot of the governmental attacks and bad press. I can't think of anyone who hates Amazon the service - they hate Amazon the pee-bottle-broker and tornado-warning-ignorer.
As for other e-commerce sites, they'll probably just buy them, crush them, or if they can't do that - sell them logistics and infrastructure services.
[edit] Consider FedEx vs UPS. FedEx can't hire staffers right now, while UPS, unionized, saw basically zero attrition. FedEx is suffering right now. UPS, crushing it. [1]
The massive labor shortage that’s rocked the U.S. since the pandemic and disrupted long-established employment relationships hasn’t had much impact on UPS, which pays its unionized drivers the highest wages in the industry. That’s helped it maintain a stable workforce and rising profits throughout the current disruptions. Meanwhile, lower-paying, nonunionized FedEx racked up $450 million in extra costs because of labor shortages. And while UPS easily beat earnings expectations and predicted a rising profit margin in the U.S. for the fourth quarter, FedEx signaled that its profit margin will fall further.
I'll never call them perfect, to be sure. They do have counterfeit issues and bait-and-switch reviews. However, I don't hate them for it, and I'm confident they're continuing to improve. JMHO.
>I can't think of anyone who hates Amazon the service
I don't like the destruction of smaller companies. Why go with a smaller company who is going to charge more for the product, quite probably charge for shipping, all while taking longer with the shipping?
FWIW, I joined HN 14 years ago (wow) and there's never been a time in those 14 years that HN wasn't convinced that facebook's demise was just around the corner.
This is true, but the main reason was that people have been predicting this was that young people don’t want to be on a social network with their parents. This social dynamic prediction has played out, and Facebook did the 100% predictable thing that all rich entrenched players do — they bought the smaller competitors, most famously Instagram.
I fully expect them to continue to be able to monetize their user base, and purchase smaller competitors for a while.
The most recent warning flag for me is their rebranding. Announcing a major pivot to center on Occulus (I’m sorry “the metaverse”.), when VR has been nothing more than niche gaming is very weird and troublesome.
On the bright side, Facebook is a giant ossified megacorp. All that’s going to happen is some division is going to get new signage, and every PM is going to update their slide decks to say “metaverse”, and everyone is going to do what they were already doing.
As an ex-employee, Facebook is many things, but ossified it is not. The internal impact/metric-oriented culture means that new bets are encouraged and rewarded, whereas product teams that are keeping it safe will eventually get disbanded.
FB’s predilection to reorg every six months, isn’t a sign of strength. It’s actually a sign of dysfunction. They’ve just been able to power through by being extraordinarily lucky in the social networking space. It’s tire spinning.
The company hasn’t released a noteworthy product in at least a decade.
I joined HN 12 years ago and I don't remember things that way at all. My impression is that it's extremely rare for anyone to claim that FB's demise is imminent, but it seems like it has become more common for HN posters to comment on FB's decline in recent years. ...but you could say the same thing for Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google as well -- it doesn't seem to be FB specific to me.
MySpace died because it became a minority player in a quickly growing landscape, at a time where alternatives were available.
To simplify, if you have captured over 50 percent of the entire english-speaking Internet population, sure you have a huge network effect behind you. But if that population count is multiplied by 100x and your numbers don't grow alongside that, your network effect is not as strong.
My wife was working there at their peak (and left at just the right time—I like to think that their decline was the inevitable result of her departure). They had such high engagement that they had a hard time selling enough ads to fill all the available ad slots.
Including my ex-account period I have been reading HN for 12 years now, while I agree Facebook has always been unpopular on HN. It was since may be 2015 it became extremely one sided. Even the very rare few who speak up with Facebook financial and user growth are all gone. ( Arguably speaking lots of things on HN have become one sided )
There is this phenomenon I witness time and time again, people confuse what they wish to happen; the decline or death of Facebook with any real facts.
It is like saying Apple is doomed for 10 years and yet Apple is now a 3 trillion company.
... which is owned by FB. Between Instagram securing the audience of the next generation, and Whatsapp gaining huge share as the communication tool of developing world, FB is going to do just fine, even if facebook.com usage totally tanks (also unlikely)
I'm convinced facebook.com usage will completely tank. It is surviving on older people and newer market where it got popular later, but I believe all social websites have the cycle where it's unknown, then popular, then everybody's parents join, then no longer popular, then dead.
As for Whatsapp, it makes no money, and there are plenty of non-monetized instant messengers, so I can't see them making a profit there.
The one thing they still have is Instagram, but it's "reels" haven't beaten tiktok, and it's already filled to exhaustion with ads, so it's a matter of time before it's popularity starts to decline.
As for the multiverse, that will never amount to anything.
Then something else (possibly NOT FB owned) will take over... like another tik tok. Kids don't want to be on the same social as their parents. Its gonna be a revolving door every 5 or 10 years.
My thought process on Facebook declining isn't about perception. It's that they are putting a ton of capital into and taking a huge risk on the Metaverse. If it fails it could mean a major decline for Facebook.
I think they've lost GenZ, though. Boomers and GenX use Facebook, Millennials use Instagram, but GenZ uses TickTock, and unlike with Instagram, it doesn't look like they can just buy it out to reach the next generation.
I would fully expect this trend to continue - each new generational cohort will latch onto a new social network that is separate from the ones their lame parents and older siblings use.
This poses a massive institutional risk to any social network. They either need to aggressively pump out new brands to try and capture that themselves, or buy promising startups, but it wouldn't be too difficult to fail at both of those and just completely skip a generation. A few of those misses added up could be a terminal failure.
> But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily
That's an interesting perspective, I was pretty convinced that facebook was almost dead since all of my friends (in France) have almost completely stopper using it. Well most of us are still casually browsing it every once in a while, but it's far less often than it used to be, and worse: we don't have interactions together on that platform. The last remaining usage was events, but since covid basically killed most large-group events for a while, even this usage died off.
I wonder if it's more of a group difference, or maybe it depends from country to country. Where do you live?
Midwestern GenX suburban parent here. Nothing important happens in our subdivision (hundreds of homes) without mention of it in the neighborhood's private Facebook group. Our public school district uses a Facebook page as a primary announcement platform. Kids' sports and social groups are all organized as Facebook groups and pages. You cannot escape Facebook if you're a suburban parent in the US.
Very good point. Facebook has gone from something that I used for enjoyment (2004 through maybe 2016) to something that I resentfully use only to conduct business in my local community. It's still "social" but it's the difference between hanging out with friends vs. running errands at the store, post office, city hall, etc. It has clearly grown in importance by becoming the de facto official online presence of so many entities, so I can't escape it, but I absolutely want to minimize my time spent on that stuff.
I reflexively answered the poll with Facebook because I hate it, but then I realized that I'm probably closer to killing my Netflix account than my Facebook account, and I doubted my answer. Now you've convinced me again that Facebook is most in decline.
In my experience, a lot of people still use Facebook, but in a completely different way than, say, 5 or 10 years ago.
In the past, I would check it many times a day to see what my friends were up to, or to see what events we could go together to. Now what I see is mostly reposts of memes and ragebaits. Part of the reason is probably that we got older and I moved (the latter being the main reason I still use Facebook, to keep in touch with people), but since younger people moved to other networks, that doesn't change much in my opinion.
Also, people die. I already get from time a reminder of the birthday of somebody that I know died. That's creepy as hell and it's only going to get worse.
In my opinion the only redeeming feature of Facebook at the moment are private groups, but that in my opinion is not enough to sustain a social network, since many are moving to WhatsApp, Telegram and the like.
I deleted Facebook last year. At that point, I had 420 friends, 10 of whom were dead. One of them I discovered was dead while going through the list of all my friends making notes of who they were. This was despite numerous posts on her wall about her death. The damned algorithm didn't bother to show me that bit of news.
No one's posting to their news feed anymore. They're spending all their time commenting on news posts, posting in neighborhood groups, and and buying/selling on Marketplace.
My two cents is that people are dramatically under-weighting the possibility that Zuckerberg is a visionary with his AR/VR plays. I am extremely bullish on FB solely because of that.
I think people will be as wrong about his VR plays as they were about the Instagram acquisition.
Agree with you there. You've got a founder led company making visionary plays that have every appearance of being on the right track. The Quest is not just a tech marvel, it was also the best selling game console this Christmas. The overall vision will take a few more hardware iterations, but has huge potential to replace smartphones, laptops, game consoles and offices. At this very moment there's another comment thread talking about how the web is an SEO spam graveyard and Google is ripe to be disrupted. Those thinking the disrupter is going to be Duck Duck Go are kidding themselves.
VR has been just around the corner for at least 30 years. I remember experiencing my first VR demo in 1997, complete with the gushing marketer convinced that the new age of VR was finally upon us, and this was long after the failed "VR pods" of the early 90s. The argument has always been "The technology is finally real-enough looking and believable! VR is now inevitable!" I argue that VR is not held back by graphic realism, input latency, or lack of content, but the form factor itself. Too few people want to strap something to their face which entirely takes over vision and hearing and then stumble around awkwardly flailing their limbs and hoping they don't run into anything. This fact hasn't changed since the earliest days of the technology.
Well, as those 30+ year olds get older, marketers are going to give less and less of a shit about them.
Facebook makes most of their money from their ad network that mostly exists on sites that nobody actually needs to visit (Facebook, ig). In addition, Meta is spending a boat load on engineers who don't really want to work there, so they can make a "metaverse" which I'll bet most of them don't give half a shit about. Then they're going to market the hell out of it and at the end of the day I just don't think that many people are going to use it enough to make it all worthwhile.
I could be wrong but I think if Meta isn't careful in how they diversify their focus they could face a real reckoning that has nothing to do with their current political pushback.
Google search is still pretty good, and their ad network is used throughout the internet so I think they're safe.
Amazon will do whatever it takes to keep sales up, so I have faith in them. If nothing else they're a company that seems extremely capable of adapting to changing market conditions.
Amazon / Google I think will stay strong due to their infrastructure in cloud technology. Amazon has the physical delivery infrastructure as well, which doesn't have a great competitor yet.
Apple is currently doing fine with their devices. I think the health industry will adopt some of their tech soon (like the apple watch) to get some of that sweet, sweet healthcare / insurance money
That leaves the "worst" of the group to either Facebook or Netflix.
I haven't heard much about what Netflix is doing, but things seem to be going generally okay so far.
Facebook has extremely negative news all over the media on seemingly both the tech and political side. For example, malicious targeting of children and their platform being used for fake news / propaganda. On the tech side, I don't have confidence in their current, future, or past projects such as Oculus or their extreme hype around the metaverse.
For these reasons (by default and past/present/future speculation) given the wording on this question, I think Facebook is the obvious "loser."
I believe nobody talking about Netflix is worse than people talking negatively about Facebook. Facebook has far-reaching influence over non-US societies, and are generally capable of living off of just those societies. Netflix, on the other hand, is very quickly losing the content war to the likes of Disney and HBO, plus further losing its bread-and-butter catalog backfill to Hulu. Facebook is going to keep being the popular boogeyman, possibly declining over the next decade. Netflix may truly be gone in 10 years, though.
I love Instagram as well as Pinterest. Two unpopular things on HN. There is no service out there to curate visual culture like these two. Want to build a image collection of vintage receipts!? You got it. These two platforms are truly amazing for this kind of a thing. Also ads on IG are something I'd actually want.
Unless there will be another communication platform that could capture a good chunk of Facebook's users, Facebook is here to stay. A lot of Facebook features are just very difficult to implement in other platforms nowadays. One example is group messaging. WhatsApp has users from a wide range of age groups and no other platforms could easily compete with that. Communicating with our family, regardless of their age group, is a very crucial part of our culture and Facebook fills that gap. Another example is online selling. Buy-and-sell groups are thriving in Facebook because it's so easy to publish your products and immediately communicate with your potential customers. For example, in the Southeast Asian region, Facebook took a large chunk of users from Carousell, the most popular online selling platform there for years before Facebook released Marketplace. Even for me personally, I've tried to stop using Facebook for several months but in my home country, Facebook is just too integrated in its culture.
I have never used any mainstream social media. I do participate in this and a few other online forums. For communicating directly with others online, I use email.
I voted for FB but yeah I really have no idea. I don't get social media at all. I don't get Twitter or TikTok. I don't get how anyone makes a nickel in advertising. I also don't get crypto. They're worth billions based on network effects for reasons I can't comprehend. I understand the internal logic of how they function and monetize but I can't understand how they get so much engagement.
Amazon is the only one on that list that has actively reached out to me, it's also the only one I'd never interview at given what I've heard about working conditions there. Some places seem to keep everything on fire all the time and have big expectations on engineers personal time to keep the fires from consuming the business, Amazon is like that from what I've heard.
Really depends on your team, and your manager. I'm actually having a pretty good time (in Europe) - there's absolutely no expectation to work overtime/weekends.
I’ve never had a a job where that isn’t true. Every interview I’ve done, the hiring manager is in the last round of interviewing. Usually the format is
Recruiter phone screen -> engineer technical interview -> on-site with manager and engineers
Fair enough. My point is it's high effort for a roll of the dice. Having a general reputation as a nice place to work goes a long way in my willingness to interview as I feel more confidant that I won't land on one of the bad teams at the end.
I've heard that too, but the way they backload RSUs feels kind of risky. You kinda have to tough it out 3+ years or take the loss if you need to move on earlier.
I wonder if “all of the above” is too crazy? All of these companies have reached a stage in their corporate life where innovation is expected to stop or at least slow down.
Is this in any way inspired by Chamath Palihapitiya advice to short a FAANG that you think will decline and go long the one you think will do best (to hedge against major market moves)
From a user utility / user-friendliness / product quality point of view, all of them have already declined, and will likely continue to do so. At the same time all of them will likely continue to grow, although with diminishing returns.
Amazon, Apple, and Google are each well-entrenched and also have a good bit of cash and patents available to pivot or crush competitors if necessary. Plus if broken up (e.g. by gov't antitrust regs, etc.) each would have multiple sustainable businesses that could survive independently of the main company.
Netflix will buy/be bought. Much like cell phone carriers, ISPs, and CATV companies, consolidation will leave only a few heavy hitters. Netflix would be a nice addition to Peacock or Paramount+ and would give each a sense of legitimacy.
Meanwhile, Facebook has made many enemies on all sides; they're synonymous with tracking users, fake news, and old folks. I can't think of anyone who doesn't use Facebook somewhat begrudgingly. Also, does anyone actually like FB/Meta? Or Zuckerberg, the defacto face of the company? Facebook is one or two gaffes away from where Myspace is today.
Facebook (Meta) the company is a lot more than Facebook the social media network.
Meta owns WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the biggest social networks, that are ubiquitous with younger generations. It does not matter that Facebook is associated with old people, because Facebook also owns the places where all the young people are at.
I think many people underestimate how much of a foothold Facebook has outside of the USA with Whatsapp and Instagram.
Especially in countries without net neutrality, social networks may be included in your phone plan even when real internet isn't -- forcing many local businesses to interact with their customers over instagram, whatsapp or facebook messenger. (Having a website is pointless if most of your customers cannot reach it).
Has to be Netflix as I really don't know what their core competency is right now. They produce some content but they sell subs via content from others. They don't have a larger business to fund the slide into the abyss, IMO.
I was trying to decide which of these I am hoping will decline, but realized the answer is actually all of them - even the one I work for.
Netflix is the only one I consider "innocent" however their market segment as a whole deserves a kicking for pushing us back towards the cable TV model.
I have historically been very anti Apple but the M1 is impressive, as is their attitude to privacy. Not such a good look on the working culture front though.
Google and Amazon are both toxic to some extent, while being so good as to be indispensable to a majority of their customers. For Google that is B2C, for Amazon (and Microsoft, who deserve inclusion here), that is B2B. On balance I expect stasis for all 3.
Having Facebook decline all the way out of existence would give me hope for humanity, but I don't see it happening.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 1503 ms ] threadOn the other hand, I think we could see FB utterly collapse over the next decade. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
It will be interesting to see in what direction Netflix decides to expand or if they will just stay in the movie and series business. I feel like they should have bought CrunchyRoll instead of Sony, that's a missed opportunity imo. But since they're trying some game experiments they might decide to buy some game developers? Or a big music streaming company, that would almost fit better with their business?
Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram are very sticky. I don't see them disappearing anytime soon. Facebook has a massive image problem though, so who knows how that affects their VR attempts?
I disagree. I play for Netflix and Amazon Prime video (that was a cross-sell). I'm not playing for another.
If everything is one one service, then I'll pay for it. That was the original promise of Netflix. But now everyone wants to play that game.
Two services, maybe I'll pay. N services? Screw that, might as well go back to torrenting. And then, why keep Netflix?
Paying for TV shows is _voluntary_. Consumers are willing to pay, but only up to a point. Jerk them around too much, and the consent goes away - not only will Netflix get only a slice of the pie, but the whole pie will be smaller.
Edit only for poor sentences, no content change.
Interestingly, from a physical perspective there's not much difference between saying "fagm" and saying "fact". But one of those is easy for English speakers and one is impossible.
Coarticulated velar/labial consonants exist in other languages, though.
I don't think they're the only ones with this issue. Job hoppers can get bigger raises than people staying and climbing the ladder "the old fashioned way".
Also worth noting that while many in Seattle complain about housing costs, cost of living is much lower than in the bay area. That was definitely part of my calculus for accepting an MS offer years ago.
https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Microsoft&tr...
No. I work for a FAANG company at the moment and Microsoft was my previous employer and i can confirm that Microsoft significantly underpays when compared with FAANG.
Netflix is a TV company. Their tech is a commodity. An important commodity, for sure, but it's not what makes them valuable. Their critical offering is their reach and programming.
FAAMG (or MAAAM now, I guess?) is a sane grouping of giant companies because their critical offerings and expertise areas are their software and their platforms. I think Google would be totally capable of reimplementing Netflix's streaming services if they needed to, but after years of trying they still haven't been able to fully match Amazon Web Services. That's the difference between Big Company and Big Tech Company. Similarly, it's why Tesla isn't on this list: they're huge and growing and they write software, but their software is just a means to an end, not a valuable platform in itself.
But it is a “commodity” in the sense that it’s just a thing that needs to be built to support their product offering, and which other similar companies with similar product offerings have built. Disney+ exists, Hulu exists, Amazon built Prime Video, Google has been operating YouTube for years. If you need to serve streaming video, it’s no longer a groundbreaking feat to be able to do it.
Perhaps some sort of "Tube" that "You" could use to watch content, maybe with a subscription option?
It's a lot easier for Disney and their ilk to build streaming services than it is for Netflix to build Disney's content catalog. Props to Netflix though, they've been punching above their weight in that area.
Reminds me of the Dow Jones, which is just 30 somewhat-arbitrary companies, and is basically the sum of the stock prices of those companies (yes, that means a $800/share company matters 20X more than a $20/share company).
Microsoft
Alphabet
Apple
Amazon
Netflix
F*** the MMAAAN!
Your statement only makes sense if time was invariant.
Thinking of things this way, Netflix is the odd one out and most likely to fail, because I reluctantly engage with products from those other brands everyday. And I suspect everyone else does too.
Every social media company that optimizes for "engagement" (which means addictiveness and the promotion of polarizing and triggering content) is part of the problem but Facebook is probably the largest player here.
These companies are making billions off the collective lobotomization of humanity.
If you're just looking at the consumer end of it, maybe. but over the last couple years amazon has become one of if not the largest logistics company in the world, and across the full line from supplier to last-mile delivery. it's not sexy innovation like a new iPhone is, but they've been developing a huge moat and as long as customers want quick delivery of their online purchases, amazon is a long ways in front of any competitor.
All the complaints about review fraud or inventory commingling are small-potatoes compared to the ability to do next-day delivery of millions of different SKUs to a large portion of the planet.
But right now, Oculus is simply too bulky and too low-res for any sort of meaningful digital work.
I think what Spatial.io has done with the Halo Lens looks promising.
https://youtu.be/AtRDBnUEXjk?t=16
So it means Meta has the chance to be the Android to Apple's iPhone in the VR/AR space. The main challenge to me looks like that nobody can match Apple's silicon for this kind of application so Meta simply won't be able to compete in the same league as far as on-device computing power. Then, philisophically, I don't think Zuckerberg will be able to stomache opening up the Oculus/Quest ecosystem to become the open "yin" to Apple's closed ecosystem "yang". I don't think offering a second ecosystem that is just as closed is going to cut it if they want to get anywhere near what Apple's market share will be. So there's a strong risk this turns out more like Apple Watch vs Android Wear rather than iPhone vs Android.
Whatever happens, it will be pretty interesting to observe.
Amazon and Google are conglomerates now. So, if you are just focusing on Amazon.com and Google search/ads/email - then it's hard to tell.
Now days you can get internet for $50 or $100 (depending on location, speed etc).
Then if you wanted say 5 of the various platforms, that's going to roughly be $50 to $70 more. So that's still a likely savings.
And on top of that, all new movies are basically being PRODUCED by these networks, so for the most part you don't need a theater (or their prices).
And on top of all that, instead of just fully subscribing to all of them, just get one at a time. Want the new Dexter series, get Showtime. Done with that? drop it until season 2 is out.
So it definitely can be a lot cheaper than the old days.
And yes, it definitely can be cheaper if you willing to actively manage what subscriptions you need and don't need one month at a time.
Its significantly better than cable TV still. I also dont get people reminiscing about one streaming service dominating, we shouldnt be wishing for monopolies. Everyone coming out with their own platform should drive up competition and give us better quality services
I also find collecting to be satisfying, there's something nice about knowing that Netflix can't just decide to take Arcane away from me
In Australia I can’t get anything better than 1080 for some unknown reason, it’s not because it doesn’t exist in higher quality - torrent sites often list 4K resolution files. Presumably it’s the potato-quality internet in this country.
Now its mostly just Netflix originals which aren't necessarily bad but maybe not worth it's own subscription every month.
Obviously waiting for DVDs to arrive is a hassle in comparison to watch-at-any-time streaming but that's ok tradeoff for the freedom it gives me to chose a title to watch from its vast DVD and Blue Ray catalog.
https://streamhash.com/how-does-netflix-license-tv-shows-and...
That's a great exaggeration. There was never a time when you could name a film and expect it to be on Netflix to stream.
And many people don't even have DVD players anymore. I don't.
I think film students and the like. It's become a niche product, not a mass-market one.
Many companies fail to adapt and stick with old business models. Netflix did the exact opposite and took their dvd business behind the barn and shot it in the head.
The only reason I do is because gaming consoles double as DVD players now. I assume that's a leading force in why others might have DVD players, too.
The wording here sounded a bit off to me here; I read it as "usually Blu-ray quality is worse or the same as streaming quality but sometimes it's better" while I think what you probably meant (and would make a lot more sense) was "usually streaming is just as good as Blu-ray but sometimes the streaming quality is bad and a Blu-ray is better".
Is the latter what you meant?
Though there is also the possibility that there's a 4K version of a movie available to stream but not released on Blu-ray. Maybe that's what you referred to?
Full HD 1080p bitrates are a similar story, Blu Ray is much higher than streaming (36Mb/s vs around 6Mb/s, respectively)[3][4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray
[2] https://big-photography.com/guides/what-is-netflix-4k-bitrat...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Bit_rate
[4] https://www.howtogeek.com/338983/how-much-data-does-netflix-...
- The perceived streaming quality may match Blu-ray because the bitrate is high enough that humans can't tell the difference anymore. This is especially likely to be the case is the content isn't challenging.
- The perceived quality may be higher than Blu-Ray because 4K is available for streaming but not as a Blu-Ray release. So the comparison isn't 1080p streaming vs. 1080p Blu-ray but 4K streaming vs. 1080p Blu-ray. If you plot perceived quality vs. bitrate against each other for multiple resolutions, you usually find that it makes sense to increase resolution at lower bitrates than you might expect. I'd honestly expect that 16Mb/s 4K would look better to viewers than 40Mb/s 1080p. Plus, 4K is usually encoded using a more modern and efficient codec than the ancient ones we use for 1080p Blu-ray.
But note that I'm talking about perceived quality here. Higher bitrates might lead to higher computed quality metrics like PSNR and SSIM but past a point, those metrics no longer have any correlation to human perception and that point is lower than you might think.
I wonder if the same story will happen with regards to lossy video compression, I mean perhaps, once our tech will be so much better that we will be able to use lossless formats for video, people will look back at the formats we have today and think that they look bad.
Remember VHS? I used to think they looked alright back then :-)
I think that the lower adoption of Blu Ray vs. streaming is purely due to convenience, not quality. Most people don't want to deal with physical media. In the same way that uncompressed audio is better than Spotify and similar services, yet almost no one buys audio CDs any more.
In Audio, there are now services that let you download uncompressed and/or lossless audio (Bandcamp, Beatport etc.), they are not as mainstream as Spotify but they are moderately successful and have their place in the market.
I wonder if the same thing could happen for movies: offering higher quality downloadable movies, without the physical medium. Perhaps cinephiles could be interested. Maybe it will happen when average bandwidth, at least in the developed world, approaches the equivalent of a 4K Blu Ray bitrate: no one wants to wait for a long download to end, people want just-in-time streaming.
(Note: Blu Ray, unlike Audio CD, is not lossless, it's just that it's got much less compression than the typical streaming services).
When it comes to video compression though, industry practice is largely based on the result of user testing. There are well-controlled tests where a bunch of people are put in a specific test environment and shown videos encoded using different parameters and there are larger scale A/B tests where a streaming platform will tweak parameters and see how they affect metrics like time spent consuming content. So I'm confident that the compression of today matches the users and hardware of today.
However hardware can change and I expect that's what will drive increases in video quality. For example the encodes of today are biases to some extent by the fact that people watch videos on tiny screens like phones or tablets, which are likely a bottleneck for quality perception. If people start consuming more content on say VR headsets, streaming platforms may see the need to increase quality. 8K is also a possible driver (especially for very large displays).
Connectivity is also a big deal. Lossless music is possible because the bitrate is relatively low but streaming 4K blu-ray is out of the question for many people at the moment. In the future though it's definitely a possibility.
[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07861
The library is huge and goes back decades. There are usually good user reviews at the Netflix web site for guidance. I suspect there are thousands of theatrically released movies that Netflix only offers on disc, not streaming.
In the last ten years, I've rented almost 900 movies (including a few TV shows like Breaking Bad) on disc, so that's well below $2/rental. I live about 50 miles from the nearest distribution center, so turnaround is almost always just two days, because the post office scans the returned disk when I post it, so Netflix sends out the new one the next day, even before they receive my return. They did pull a fast one a few years back by silently stopping outgoing shipments on Saturdays, but I live with it.
Discs have great resolution, often have bonus features, and almost always have closed captioning, which I appreciate more and more as I age. And the credits don't get reduced to a thumbnail on screen so the next show can be promoted. And I don't have to log in, or enable wi-fi on my TV.
I use an old PS3 as my blu ray player, works great with a Logitech remote control, supports HDMI output. I also have a blu-ray external disk drive for my laptop if I'm on the road (only about $100 as I recall).
Since Netflix is primarily responsible for putting Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and various local video stores out of business, I'd be really pissed if they ended the disc rental service.
Don't they get scratched these days? I remember the DVD days of Blockbuster, and also thinking "DVD as a technology is just not ready for rental" every time I got a disc that was scratched and/or had sticky stuff glued to it.
̶A̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶U̶K̶,̶ ̶N̶e̶t̶f̶l̶i̶x̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶n̶t̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶i̶c̶e̶.̶ edit: I'm mistaken, they used to. There's just one provider left here that does (called Cinema Paradiso).
Certainly convenient though if you didn't care much when you saw something.
That's not what your parent comment was suggesting. It was saying that Netflix's streaming collection was the same as Blockbuster's physical DVD collection, which was big but not unlimited (i.e. "every film you can think of")
https://dvd.netflix.com/Movies
(Aware of the cuties debacle, but this is a rather overt example, aforementioned are sometimes subtle.)
What does “pro paedophile tendencies” even mean? Can you give concrete examples of this? I’ve never heard this accusation before…
Big Mouth (a cartoon) is about child sex
Emily in Paris, character lead has sex with a 17yo on screen.
There are more, I just can't bring them to mind at the moment. Perhaps I should begin to document them.
Hmm... Black Mirror (the Netflix episodes) had child sex in, End of The Fucking World had child sex in it; although both with negative consequences so poor examples.
Maybe it's coincidental, but it is something I've started to notice more and more.
Keep it in mind next time you watch some shows on Netflix and perhaps it will stand out.
Not quite sure how that's pedophilic. Not any adults being attracted to kids. Just horny teenagers being horny teenagers.
Not seen Emily in Paris so I can't comment.
And you already covered EotfW and Black Mirror showing its a bad thing.
Not sure I'd call that pedophilic either unless simply touching the subject of pedophilia is somehow "promoting" it.
Was referring to above; Netflix didn't create any of those. But yes, over time they'll have old entries in the Netflix catalog.
Their first original (House of Cards) was only 9 years ago
The biggest problem is finding what you want. Need a TV Guide for streaming, so I can search for say "The Martian", and it would tell me "This is on netflix in your country", or "this isn't available on subscription, but you can rent it on amazon for x.xx or buy it on apple tv for y.yy"
If they are just a content provider to apple, they lost.
Also you can't get most streaming content on cable, or the sports content I get on cable without 4 streaming services (ESPN+, Peacock, Paramount+ & Hulu).
So I've got a cable package w/ sports + a couple streaming services. Sometimes I'll pick one up for a month or 2 and drop it just for something I want to see. Sometimes I rent something from Amazon.
It's just a mess.
But the search is pretty easy. My Rokus, Amazon sticks, or even cable box search fine for me.
Also has a nifty feature where you can list all available episodes of a show across all seasons and it will mix in your live recordings with streaming options. I honestly don't know why Tivo doesn't get a lot more love. Cable when you aren't paying per-TV fees for boxes is pretty great. Just a couple of bucks a month for a cable card in the Tivo and then you hook up Tivo Mini units on all of the other TVs in your house to access the main box.
https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
I still haven't seen Game of Thrones.
But it was quite a success for RIAA/MPAA to stick a label of criminal to everyone who downloads free audio-visual content even if it's not true. Though, let's not aid them in their quest by throwing sentences like 'illegal content' too frequently around.
Covenant on Kodi was the first and last time I actually felt like TV was in the future.
Having to switch apps is a trivial inconvenience. Seems to me that price-point is what we should be focusing on, and I'm fairly confident things have improved greatly.
More generally, I'm sceptical of any argument that laments the lack of a monopoly.
Certainly myriad streaming services are better than cable- but are they better than pirating? Harder to be confident of that now than a few years ago
Absolutely not. I am absolutely confident of that statement. One box of drives, a small machine to act as a Plex server, and VPN is all you need. Pre-made, high quality tools exist to automate everything. It's almost completely friction-less.
Pirating is easier, better, and faster now than it has ever been. The push to splinter streaming services is only speeding up its adoption, again. Cable is the old cable, streaming services are the new cable, but with more barriers and more difficult setup.
For giggles, I just went ahead and priced this out:
One-time costs:
* Plex Pass: $80
* NZB indexer access: $10 (for 2 or 3)
Ongoing monthly costs:
* File server (three-year deprecation): $55
* IPTV: $15
* Unlimited Usenet account: $3
This took an afternoon of setup, but has just worked since. Heck, the other day I discovered a new season of a show had apparently been released – because it completed downloading and filled Plex overnight.
- Resume does not work reliably
- Subtitles are ugly and un-configurable
I will keep monitoring it from time-to-time, and switch from Plex as soon as these 2 problems are fixed. Thanks for recommending, I have been on the lookout for such an app for a long time.
I picked up Thundernews when there was an "unlimited for $4" sale going on, and have used it ever since. Keep an eye out for their sales, because they don't seem to expire them. They resell UsenetExpress so pick up a block account or two from another provider for fills as always.
And don't get me started on Netflix auto-preview (which cannot be disabled on my device).
I had Netflix and Prime till recently in an effort to promote the defragmentation of streaming services as a show of unity but, its getting worse. And these guys do not need my money while the service they provide gets worse and worse.
Also, many of these platforms made the strange decision to not accept subscriptions from locations outside the US in the beginning. I tried to subscribe to Disney+ and HBO max when they started, but was denied due to location.
Probably works now, but I don't care. They had their one chance.
Hard for me to see how it wouldn't be FB/meta. They're betting the farm on something unproven / creating new habits / maintaining habits that seem to be waning.
The cloud computing fad could go away and Amazon would still be the #1 retailer.
Google, Microsoft will get bigger probably more government contract related.
Netflix is in the worst poor position. There costs for high end production are extremely high because they have to overpay for top talent. So they take years to continue a series or cancel successful ones because actors want raises. The availability of fresh existing shows keeps going down while costs go up.
Any product that Facebook makes produces -99% of value for humanity.
Unless of course pushing buttons on an orange site is going to change things...
Ok, I'm also probably wrong about Facebook, but I so want to be right! :-)
Amazon is also kept up by AWS, which who knows if one day that is spun off.
That would in turn alleviate a lot of the governmental attacks and bad press. I can't think of anyone who hates Amazon the service - they hate Amazon the pee-bottle-broker and tornado-warning-ignorer.
As for other e-commerce sites, they'll probably just buy them, crush them, or if they can't do that - sell them logistics and infrastructure services.
[edit] Consider FedEx vs UPS. FedEx can't hire staffers right now, while UPS, unionized, saw basically zero attrition. FedEx is suffering right now. UPS, crushing it. [1]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/labor-sho...Wait, what? They do have a huge problem with counterfeit crap sold via bait-and-switch reviews.
Edit: A related article https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/amazon-still-has...
But a fair call-out nonetheless.
I don't like the destruction of smaller companies. Why go with a smaller company who is going to charge more for the product, quite probably charge for shipping, all while taking longer with the shipping?
everyone over 30 i know are past facebook and realize Instagram is adware/spyware.
My survey isn't very data heavy, but from the people I know, it's mostly older people and the people who stayed in my hometown that still use it.
I fully expect them to continue to be able to monetize their user base, and purchase smaller competitors for a while.
The most recent warning flag for me is their rebranding. Announcing a major pivot to center on Occulus (I’m sorry “the metaverse”.), when VR has been nothing more than niche gaming is very weird and troublesome.
On the bright side, Facebook is a giant ossified megacorp. All that’s going to happen is some division is going to get new signage, and every PM is going to update their slide decks to say “metaverse”, and everyone is going to do what they were already doing.
FB’s predilection to reorg every six months, isn’t a sign of strength. It’s actually a sign of dysfunction. They’ve just been able to power through by being extraordinarily lucky in the social networking space. It’s tire spinning.
The company hasn’t released a noteworthy product in at least a decade.
It’s an ossified megacorp.
It’s niche.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/metaverse-needs-more-than-vr-ch...
To simplify, if you have captured over 50 percent of the entire english-speaking Internet population, sure you have a huge network effect behind you. But if that population count is multiplied by 100x and your numbers don't grow alongside that, your network effect is not as strong.
There is this phenomenon I witness time and time again, people confuse what they wish to happen; the decline or death of Facebook with any real facts.
It is like saying Apple is doomed for 10 years and yet Apple is now a 3 trillion company.
the youngsters seem more interested in insta and tiktok
... which is owned by FB. Between Instagram securing the audience of the next generation, and Whatsapp gaining huge share as the communication tool of developing world, FB is going to do just fine, even if facebook.com usage totally tanks (also unlikely)
As for Whatsapp, it makes no money, and there are plenty of non-monetized instant messengers, so I can't see them making a profit there.
The one thing they still have is Instagram, but it's "reels" haven't beaten tiktok, and it's already filled to exhaustion with ads, so it's a matter of time before it's popularity starts to decline.
As for the multiverse, that will never amount to anything.
Then something else (possibly NOT FB owned) will take over... like another tik tok. Kids don't want to be on the same social as their parents. Its gonna be a revolving door every 5 or 10 years.
This poses a massive institutional risk to any social network. They either need to aggressively pump out new brands to try and capture that themselves, or buy promising startups, but it wouldn't be too difficult to fail at both of those and just completely skip a generation. A few of those misses added up could be a terminal failure.
Tiktok seems to have largely displaced Snapchat in under two years.
That's an interesting perspective, I was pretty convinced that facebook was almost dead since all of my friends (in France) have almost completely stopper using it. Well most of us are still casually browsing it every once in a while, but it's far less often than it used to be, and worse: we don't have interactions together on that platform. The last remaining usage was events, but since covid basically killed most large-group events for a while, even this usage died off.
I wonder if it's more of a group difference, or maybe it depends from country to country. Where do you live?
I reflexively answered the poll with Facebook because I hate it, but then I realized that I'm probably closer to killing my Netflix account than my Facebook account, and I doubted my answer. Now you've convinced me again that Facebook is most in decline.
Also, people die. I already get from time a reminder of the birthday of somebody that I know died. That's creepy as hell and it's only going to get worse.
In my opinion the only redeeming feature of Facebook at the moment are private groups, but that in my opinion is not enough to sustain a social network, since many are moving to WhatsApp, Telegram and the like.
I deleted Facebook last year. At that point, I had 420 friends, 10 of whom were dead. One of them I discovered was dead while going through the list of all my friends making notes of who they were. This was despite numerous posts on her wall about her death. The damned algorithm didn't bother to show me that bit of news.
I think people will be as wrong about his VR plays as they were about the Instagram acquisition.
Facebook makes most of their money from their ad network that mostly exists on sites that nobody actually needs to visit (Facebook, ig). In addition, Meta is spending a boat load on engineers who don't really want to work there, so they can make a "metaverse" which I'll bet most of them don't give half a shit about. Then they're going to market the hell out of it and at the end of the day I just don't think that many people are going to use it enough to make it all worthwhile.
I could be wrong but I think if Meta isn't careful in how they diversify their focus they could face a real reckoning that has nothing to do with their current political pushback.
Google search is still pretty good, and their ad network is used throughout the internet so I think they're safe.
Amazon will do whatever it takes to keep sales up, so I have faith in them. If nothing else they're a company that seems extremely capable of adapting to changing market conditions.
Apple is currently doing fine with their devices. I think the health industry will adopt some of their tech soon (like the apple watch) to get some of that sweet, sweet healthcare / insurance money
That leaves the "worst" of the group to either Facebook or Netflix.
I haven't heard much about what Netflix is doing, but things seem to be going generally okay so far.
Facebook has extremely negative news all over the media on seemingly both the tech and political side. For example, malicious targeting of children and their platform being used for fake news / propaganda. On the tech side, I don't have confidence in their current, future, or past projects such as Oculus or their extreme hype around the metaverse.
For these reasons (by default and past/present/future speculation) given the wording on this question, I think Facebook is the obvious "loser."
What about over 50?
I have never used any mainstream social media. I do participate in this and a few other online forums. For communicating directly with others online, I use email.
The "AI" has basically re-created Sport Illustrated in scroll form.
Apple has a bajillion dollar war-chest that could last forever, but they feel the most creatively bankrupt.
Netflix will buy/be bought. Much like cell phone carriers, ISPs, and CATV companies, consolidation will leave only a few heavy hitters. Netflix would be a nice addition to Peacock or Paramount+ and would give each a sense of legitimacy.
Meanwhile, Facebook has made many enemies on all sides; they're synonymous with tracking users, fake news, and old folks. I can't think of anyone who doesn't use Facebook somewhat begrudgingly. Also, does anyone actually like FB/Meta? Or Zuckerberg, the defacto face of the company? Facebook is one or two gaffes away from where Myspace is today.
Meta owns WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the biggest social networks, that are ubiquitous with younger generations. It does not matter that Facebook is associated with old people, because Facebook also owns the places where all the young people are at.
You're wrong. I work with teens. They all use both. For different reasons.
TikTok is much more creator/viewer like YouTube, where few make content, and many watch.
Instagram is where there are close "circles" (heh, G+?) of friends, and everyone is just following and making content for each-other.
Especially in countries without net neutrality, social networks may be included in your phone plan even when real internet isn't -- forcing many local businesses to interact with their customers over instagram, whatsapp or facebook messenger. (Having a website is pointless if most of your customers cannot reach it).
??
Netflix is worth more than both Universal and CBS combined.
Netflix is the only one I consider "innocent" however their market segment as a whole deserves a kicking for pushing us back towards the cable TV model.
I have historically been very anti Apple but the M1 is impressive, as is their attitude to privacy. Not such a good look on the working culture front though.
Google and Amazon are both toxic to some extent, while being so good as to be indispensable to a majority of their customers. For Google that is B2C, for Amazon (and Microsoft, who deserve inclusion here), that is B2B. On balance I expect stasis for all 3.
Having Facebook decline all the way out of existence would give me hope for humanity, but I don't see it happening.