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

According to news on January 2, the technology industry has experienced many major setbacks in the past 2022, such as the forced takeover of Twitter by Elon Elon Musk, the collapse of Google's cloud gaming service Stadia and the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. So what lessons can we learn from these setbacks?

1. Chaos has become the new normal for social media Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have all been embroiled in disputes over the past few years, from political disputes to data privacy issues, but most of their disputes are nothing compared to what Twitter has experienced in the past two months. Since agreeing to buy Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, Musk has taken a number of radical steps that have been an eye-opener.

What did Musk do? He fired more than half of his employees, and then rehired some of those who had been laid off after realizing that some people were key players in keeping the company running; he openly discussed the possibility of filing for bankruptcy because he had to repay the $13 billion he borrowed to buy Twitter Musk also pushed "hardcore" Twitter 2.0, asking employees to pledge allegiance to him (rather than criticizing him), which allegedly led to the departure of 1200 engineers and other key employees. Musk also helped Twitter launch a paid verification feature. leading to a flood of false information.

It was clear that Musk regretted it immediately after reaching a deal with Twitter. But he was forced to keep his promise, perhaps to avoid a protracted legal battle. Musk is supposed to have a grand strategy. After all, he is always known as a genius. So far, however, he has just been posting ridiculous tweets. After completing the acquisition, Musk wrote on Twitter: "how to make a small amount of money on social media? start by spending a lot of money."

He launched a poll on Twitter asking users whether he should resign as chief executive of Twitter. "as soon as a fool is willing to take over the job, I will resign immediately," Musk said. However, after he made a mess of Twitter, it was not clear who would want to accept the mess. And the situation on Twitter may be getting worse.

2. The bankruptcy of FTX reminds people that it is not easy to make money. At the beginning of last year, NFT received attention, even though most people in the world didn't know what they were.

Eleven months later, however, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are still struggling to recover from the crash. Last month, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed after rival Qian an withdrew from its acquisition plans. Subsequent investigations showed that FTX was a "house of cards" with liquidity problems and serious risk problems. FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-fried (Sam Bankman-Fried) immediately became a celebrity thanks to his role in the bankruptcy.

The performance of the cryptocurrency last year is a reminder that although its prices have soared over the past few years, the return on investment is not guaranteed. It is also a reminder that when it comes to financial management, perhaps time-tested business fundamentals are more important. But even so, NFT continues to exist.

3. Meta-universe represents the future, but it won't happen soon. More than a year ago, Facebook went all out in meta-universe and renamed himself Meta to demonstrate CEO Mark Zuckerberg's determination to build a new virtual platform. If someone is unhappy that they are not involved in the meta-universe: don't worry! It's definitely not a big deal.

During the outbreak, VR did have a brief splendor, and Meta benefited a lot from the growth in sales of Quest 2 VR helmets. What makes VR so attractive is that the epidemic has trapped most people at home. However, VR did not take off as expected, and Meta did feel the pain and lost a lot of money. While Meta is investing in this yet-to-take-off platform, its core advertising business is stumbling in a weak economy. This led to the dismissal of 11000 employees, or 13 per cent of Meta's workforce.

At last year's Meta Connect conference, the company unveiled a $1500 Quest Pro, but audiences received a lukewarm response. In addition, in a keynote presentation, Meta's sales promotion was mediocre, as it showed pre-rendered, motion-captured digital legs in an attempt to show that the technology was more advanced than it really was.

4. Nothing lasts forever in 2022, and we bid farewell to many high-profile services, and even much-hyped products or services can disappear in an instant, such as Google's cloud gaming service Google Stadia two years ago. It's supposed to revolutionize the way we play, but Google will shut it down in January. The cloud gaming service should have been easily popular, especially if gamers worked longer during the epidemic, but it was plagued by early technical glitches and seemed to lack interest and investment from within the company; platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation were also powerful.

Another technology failure is the Car Thing of music streaming service Spotify, a car accessory that was launched in 2021 but didn't go on sale until February last year. In less than five months, Spotify banned the product on the grounds that sales were too low.

Similarly, the Amazon Glow is a hybrid of tablets and projectors designed to connect children to their relatives through interactive games. However, the product lasted only slightly longer than Car Thing, and it was popular for about six months before it was shut down in October.

Facebook Portal, a video chat device, seems to be doing slightly better. During the outbreak, Facebook Portal was briefly popular when we tried desperately to keep in touch with our friends and family. However, it was not surprising that Meta quietly adjusted its product line in June, as the company faced many questions about its handling of consumer privacy.

5. There are too many shopping festivals. "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" have been around for a long time, but such activities seem to be too frequent.

Amazon's membership Day Prime Day, which is usually held in July, is becoming a new online shopping festival. But the online retailer launched a second Prime Day in October. The two-day promotion is busy, but it is clear that customer interest in the second members' Day promotion seems to be diminishing. Considering that it happened more than a month before Black Friday, I was surprised that it didn't do better.

6. Prices are getting higher and higher, and the need for smarter financial management inflation was a buzzword last year, and many of us are feeling the impact of rising prices. It is hurting our gas stations and supermarkets, and the technology community is no exception.

Meta once subsidised the price of its VR helmet to encourage users to buy, but last year raised the price of its two-year-old Quest 2 by $101 to $400. Last month, YouTube Premium's monthly subscription fee rose by $5 to $23. Disney Plus raised subscription fees in August, and Apple raised the price of its Apple Music and TV Plus packages in October.

Some of these price increases are inevitable, which means you have to manage your budget and spending more wisely and decide what movies and TV content you really want to watch, even if streaming offers low-cost subscriptions with ads.

7. One of the biggest factors contributing to the shortage of everything from cars to graphics cards that will take more time to address the chip shortage is the knock-on effect of the economic slowdown triggered by the epidemic, particularly on the supply of components such as semiconductors. This situation exposes the fact that we rely heavily on a few suppliers to provide the tiny chips that almost everything needs.

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

8. People who have nothing to fear about artificial intelligence are always talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and the future direction of technology. Blake Lemoine, Google's software engineer, went a step further, publicly expressing his concern that the company had achieved AI awareness. He was referring to Google's dialogue application language model (Lamda), which is said to be smart enough to understand jokes. Google responded by firing Lemuin, saying he leaked inside information.

In a conversation with technology journalists, Meta's BlenderBot 3 chatbot said it didn't like Facebook. Galactica, another AI system of Meta, was originally designed to receive millions of fact-based scientific papers, but it eventually had to be abandoned because it sent an error message. There is also Dall-E, which can generate images from the text you enter.

ChatGPT is the AI system launched by OpenAI in early December, and its answer to users' written questions is so accurate that it even surprised everyone. Just a few days after its launch, more than 1 million people are experimenting with ChatGPT. Technology Jackson Ryan (Jackson Ryan) thinks the system is shocking, but human work is still safe, at least for now. Although Le Mu is worried about the perception of AI, in fact, the latter does not seem to be able to cross the red line in the short term.

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