Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, November 29 (Xinhua) 2022 will be a difficult year for the US technology industry. Tech giants have cut spending and laid off staff. This year, Elon Musk (Elon Musk) spent 44 billion dollars to buy Twitter, and then "destroy" it. Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) made a big bet on meta-universe in exchange for the phrase "I was wrong".

Musk and Zuckerberg have both made mistakes this year. What are the things to ponder in the tech world this past year, and what failures can people learn from? The following are the eight major failures of the science and technology industry in 2022 by foreign media.

1. Musk's destruction of Twitter may be thrilling to witness a train crash, but now there seems to be nothing more exciting than Twitter. Over the past few years, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have all had their own problems, from political disputes to data privacy issues, but before Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion on Oct. 27, few companies faced the self-imposed survival risks of Twitter. Although it has only been a month, but the plot is already very bloody.

What did Musk do to Twitter? He laid off half of the company's employees, and then realized that the company needed someone to maintain its operation, so he had the nerve to recall some of the laid-off employees; in order to buy Twitter, he borrowed $13 billion from the bank, and when the repayment deadline was approaching, he openly discussed the possibility of Twitter filing for bankruptcy; he pushed the more "hard-core" version 2.0 of Twitter, requiring employees to owe their allegiance to him, causing 1200 employees to leave. He also launched a paid authentication function, which triggered lawbreakers to impersonate big brands to post misleading tweets, with serious consequences; he reinstated the banned accounts of former US President Donald Trump and others, relaxed content censorship and triggered advertisers to flee.

Photo 2: Musk clearly felt "buyer remorse" almost immediately after he reached the Twitter deal. But if he is going to commit himself to the deal, he should develop some kind of strategy. shouldn't he be a genius? But instead, so far, he has just posted one ridiculous tweet after another.

two。 Zuckerberg's messing up meta-universe may represent the future, but not so soon. More than a year ago, Facebook made an all-out bet on meta-universe and renamed itself Meta to demonstrate CEO Zuckerberg's commitment to the new virtual platform.

However, the meta-universe has not developed as expected, but Meta has really felt the pain. While Facebook is investing in a platform that has not yet taken off, the company's core advertising business has stumbled because of the weak economy. As a result, Meta was forced to lay off 11000 employees, or 13 per cent of Meta's workforce. Zuckerberg also made a rare public apology for his strategic transformation: "I was wrong, and I am responsible for it."

Moreover, Meta is also suspected of "fraud". At this year's Meta Connect conference, Meta unveiled a new headset, the Quest Pro, but the response was tepid. It sold for $1500 and was not suitable for consumers. What attracts more attention is that Zuckerberg's avatar has legs. But the truth is, this is only a pre-rendered digital leg realized by third-party motion capture technology, not a "real leg" that simulates user movements. Zuckerberg's meta-cosmic dream has a long way to go.

3. When the cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed earlier this year, non-homogeneous tokens (NFT) were popular, even though most people on the planet didn't know what they were. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are also growing rapidly, and FTX is not yet a household name.

Now, 11 months later, Bitcoin and other currencies in the cryptocurrency market are still unable to recover from a crash that wiped out $2 trillion in market value this summer. This month, FTX, a leading centralized encryption exchange, collapsed after rival Qian an withdrew from its acquisition plans. Subsequent investigations revealed that FTX turned out to be a fragile platform with liquidity problems and serious risk problems that eventually broke out.

The collapse of 3:FTX is a reminder that, despite the rise of cryptocurrencies over the past few years, these gains cannot be guaranteed. It is also a reminder that perhaps some time-tested business fundamentals do matter when it comes to financial management.

4. The shortage of chips is difficult to solve. The shortage of chips has caused a shortage of cars, graphics cards and other products. One of the biggest reasons is the chain effect of the economic slowdown triggered by the Asian epidemic, especially on semiconductors and other components. This situation exposes the fact that the world relies heavily on a few suppliers to provide the small chips needed for almost everything.

A year ago, Intel laid out an ambitious plan to resume chip manufacturing in the United States and invested in next-generation tools to achieve that goal. But Intel suffered a major setback in October when it reported an 85 per cent drop in third-quarter profit from a year earlier and warned that full-year sales would be lower than expected. It is a rough report, but it is also a reminder that Intel's ambition to make the US more self-sufficient in chips will take years to materialise.

5. Artificial intelligence is not that scary. Many people are talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence and the direction of the development of this technology. Blake Lemoine, a Google software engineer, deepened these concerns by saying publicly that Google's artificial intelligence system was perceptual and was later fired by Google. Despite Lemoine's concerns, artificial intelligence systems do not seem to cross this line any time soon.

6. Google's much-hyped game service shuts down

Figure 4: Google shut down its Stadia gaming service in 2022, and people bid farewell to some famous services, even those products or services that were once much-hyped may disappear in an instant. This is the case with Stadia, Google's cloud gaming service. The service, launched two years ago, aims to revolutionize the way people play games. But Google will shut it down in January. The cloud gaming service is supposed to be an easy platform to deal with, especially as players spend more time playing games during the epidemic, but it is plagued by early technical glitches and there seems to be a lack of interest and investment within the company. Moreover, there is fierce competition for cloud games on platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation.

7. The rise in the price of technology products inflation is a hot word this year, and many people have felt the impact of rising prices. At the gas station, in the supermarket, in the technology world, it's all hitting us. Meta has subsidised the price of its virtual headsets to promote the use of users. The company now raises the price of the two-year-old Quest 2 by $101 to $400. Earlier this month, the monthly subscription price for YouTube Premium members rose by $5 to $23. Disney + raised fees in August, and Apple raised prices for various Apple Music and TV Plus programs in October.

8. There are too many shopping festivals Amazon's annual shopping festival, Prime Day, is usually held in July, but the e-commerce giant launched its second Prime Day shopping festival in October. The two-day promotion was held twice, but it was clear that customer interest was far less than the Prime Day shopping day in summer. Considering that it was held more than a month before Black Friday, it's shocking that Amazon didn't do better.

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