Facebook's strength has never been innovation, but adapting to the changes; mostly through acquisition.
With the 20/20 hindsight - I'd say the VR bet was too early for Facebook. Instead of trying to build a future tech, they should have acquired it another few years later, only after the tech has reached a more mature stage.
Meta still has a chance to catch up in the AI race given they are not trying to build afresh, but once again adapt by throwing cash at it (which has been the biggest strength of Facebook and Zuckerberg. see: instagram, whatsapp, reels, and many more...)
I think they were just early with VR in general (they did buy the best VR at the time). And then severely miscalculated what VR would actually be great for.
Eventually we'll get super cheap and light headsets or glasses and gaming will be pretty cool. They should have focused all in on that. It's already a huge industry
And even if you read the banner on the site, the email they sent, and the announcement itself, you would not see instructions that mention the specific thing(s) you must change in order to opt out.
Sure, you can poke around in the settings and find one that you believe opts you out, but in lieu of clear and explicit instructions from GitHub, you'll have no way to find out. Only the possibility of finding out later that you guessed wrong.
So? You guarantee that this setting is durable and will never revert? Or you guarantee that no client-side bug on that page will not override the setting with null value when you click save on something else? Please.
For me it happened around my first week after the bootcamp, so about 6 weeks from joining.
An important nuance - most Facebook engineers don't believe that Facebook/Meta would continue to grow next year; and that disbelief had been there since as early as in 2018 (when I'd joined).
very few facebook employees use their products outside of testing, which is a big contributor to that fear - they just can't believe that there are billions of people who would continue to use apps to post what they had for lunch!
And as a result of that lack of faith, most of them believe that Meta is a bubble and can burst at any point. Consequently, everyone works for the next performance review cycle, and most are just in rush to capture as much money as they could before that bubble bursts.
> don't believe that Facebook/Meta would continue to grow next year
Huh.
The time I worked at a hyper growth company, us working in the coal mine had much the same skepticism. Our growth rate seemed ridiculous, surely we're over building, how much longer can this last?!
Happily, the marketing research team regularly presented stuff to our department. They explained who are customers were, projected market sizes (regionally, internationally), projected growth rates, competitive analysis (incumbents and upstarts), etc.
It helped so much. And although their forecasts seemed unbelievable, we over performed every year-over-year. Such that you sort of start to trust the (serious) marketing research types.
1. The only result I'd expect from posting on launch platforms/software directories is a huge number of spam in my inbox to take my product to the top of the list.
2. Selling lifetime deals is the easiest way to become a slave of small paying customers without even knowing if your product is going to find PMF ever.
3. You can't just go to a subreddit and post your product. And the ones that allow anyone to post, well, you can guess the expected outcome from those.
I run a full stack digital marketing service, and here's what I'd recon:
1. If you're developing for developers, HN is the best place to post. For both to collect feedback, and to get early customers.
2. If you're building a B2C business, start with a social presence. This is a must in today's ecosystem. DON'T LAUNCH TO THE VOID.
3. If you're building a B2B business, try to get into an accelerator like YC, who can make lots of customer intros in the early days. And given how hard it's to get into an accelerator - you should try Google ads, and maybe a couple of linkedin campaigns if you've a sharp First Target Customer Profile (not vague ICP) as fallback.
Moltbook Valuation & Funding
Deal Type Date Amount Raised to Date Post-Val Status Stage
2. Merger/Acquisition 10-Mar-2026 - - - Announced Startup
1. Early Stage VC 01-Mar-2026 - - - Completed Startup
With the 20/20 hindsight - I'd say the VR bet was too early for Facebook. Instead of trying to build a future tech, they should have acquired it another few years later, only after the tech has reached a more mature stage.
Meta still has a chance to catch up in the AI race given they are not trying to build afresh, but once again adapt by throwing cash at it (which has been the biggest strength of Facebook and Zuckerberg. see: instagram, whatsapp, reels, and many more...)
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