Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta To Create a Prediction Markets App (nytimes.com) 14
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently dispatched a small team at his company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video game-like points system instead, one person said, though the company had not ruled out the eventual use of real money betting. The app is internally referred to as "Arena" and would function independently from Meta's social networking apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, said the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans. Meta aims to grow the app by leveraging its large social networking audiences and directing them toward using it, they said.
The effort, which insiders characterized as experimental but a top priority, is part of a broader push by Mr. Zuckerberg to create new types of apps based on emerging social behavior online. More than 3.56 billion people visit one or more of Meta's apps every day, an amount that has raised questions about whether those platforms have reached a saturation point. Arena is one of a handful of apps that Meta is trying out. Others include one called Meta Photos, another stand-alone app which would create new types of media using artificial intelligence, the employees said. [...] Meta insiders have cautioned that Arena remains in development and may not be released. But as executives search for ways to keep the world's largest social media sites thriving, Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be relying on his well-worn product development strategy: Follow the users.
The effort, which insiders characterized as experimental but a top priority, is part of a broader push by Mr. Zuckerberg to create new types of apps based on emerging social behavior online. More than 3.56 billion people visit one or more of Meta's apps every day, an amount that has raised questions about whether those platforms have reached a saturation point. Arena is one of a handful of apps that Meta is trying out. Others include one called Meta Photos, another stand-alone app which would create new types of media using artificial intelligence, the employees said. [...] Meta insiders have cautioned that Arena remains in development and may not be released. But as executives search for ways to keep the world's largest social media sites thriving, Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be relying on his well-worn product development strategy: Follow the users.
Easy (Score:5, Funny)
Should be able to vibe-code that with Llama in a couple hours. Totally secure, and get employee credits for using AI too!
Me too (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, they're running out of steam (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, what was the business plan once everybody that could ever possibly want to be on facebook was on facebook?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's be honest... The steam ran out a long time ago. What was the last relevant thing Zuck really did since Facebook?
All of his projects since then were:
1) A copy of something that already existed
2) Buying something that already existed
And, still, most were failures.
Re: (Score:2)
What could have been the business plan was just to keep the site frozen ca. 2012 and continue raking in ad dollars with a minimum of maintenance effort. A stable organization, with a stable and wildly popular product, providing stable employment to the people running it.
But, simply making a luxurious living isn't good enough when you have desires of world domination. Those kind of desires necessitate, and generate, instability. So the business plan became... what we see coming out of Meta today.
Nostradamus predicts... (Score:2)
If it's a "top priority" the end goal is 100% to make this a real-money betting business to leverage the Facebook/Instagram userbase to create a racket the same as Kalshi. They will just develop a way to buy points the same way man
Gambling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It definitely is. Every dollar a person makes on such a site comes from a dollar lost by another guy. And the numbers are staggering. Like a billion dollars. And they way they are set up, those who are already rich can set things up so that they make even more money from much poorer people. The more money you have to play with, the easier it is to win on the predictions gambling sites (not to mention cheat with insider knowledge). Fantastic video on this from a young lady named Dee: https://www.youtube [youtube.com]
the zuck is so dumb (Score:1)
He had one good idea - make money off being creepy by having no ethics whatsoever. He's like a dog that found a piece of apple pie on a park bench one time and keeps thinking that he'll find another piece of pie one day by checking more park benches.
He has exactly one redeeming virtue and that is that his engineering philosophy has a heavy emphasis on backwards compatibility and not changing shit for no fucking reason. For example his engineers have improved JPEG compression instead of continually excreting