What products has Meta developed internally after Facebook that have been a success? I am actually asking this question, it seems like they have only had success purchasing already ramping products, plowing cash into them, and cross-integrating them into their product set. Why wouldn't they just continue to lean into that profile and wait for people with actual good ideas solve this.
I really doubt that 400M number. They try to get me to login to Threads see comments on Instagram posts. Technically I am monthly "active" user, but not really.
I see more Bluesky links in the wild than Threads and they claim only 27M users.
Threads is taking off in regions likely irrelevant to your interests (India, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, etc). The content on Threads covers national politics and local social issues, which would typically not be shared on a tech forum like this one.
Tech news is still dominated by X and bluesky, so naturally those content sources appear more here.
Threads is an internally developed Twitter clone when Twitter launched in 2006 and Threads launched in 2023? I'm not saying they didn't build it, but it was not an original product design; they waited until there was already a market, launched and deployed it to Facebook users. I will give you the Ray-Ban glasses, but even that was a product that is a better version of Google Glass, so still not really a unique product.
8x scaling over a time period where the available size and performance of single-image systems increased by more than 8x seems… if not trivial, at least not an “insane achievement.”
Scaling a product like that is an incredible engineering achievement, but I am speaking specifically about product development. What other products has Facebook innovated internally, worked through the product-market fit, and scaled itself? Again, my point is that they have a ton of resources and a huge existing user base, but the only successes they seem to have are purchasing companies that are ramping. They deploy engineers and connect to the existing user base, but they aren't innovative in product design.
“Scaling” as in “making sure the infrastructure can handle much higher load”, or as in “making sure the product remains genuinely useful to people, so that the user numbers go up and not down”? For both, it didn’t happen by itself, but it’s far from rocket science. A sane team of 15-20 people can do it.
I think that might be common enough these days through sound horizontal scaling principals and especially services that scale for you, but Whatsapp launched in 2009, pretty much the turning point for the tech that enables "web scale".
At that time AWS was just rolling out ELB and RDS, people were still fulfilling their (and most) roles on EC2 servers or even more likely dedicated servers / VPS that took day(s) to commission and might have even been setup by hand, there was no Docker, GitHub was new and Actions, Jenkins etc were years away, and there were very few PaaS- or IaaS-type offerings IIRC just a very nascent Heroku and Google App Engine.
They acquired Limitless AI in 2025 which had pivoted from “record and rewind anything on your Mac” to a hardware pendant “granola for everything” product. It was not in market for very long prior to the acquisition.
Hardware was very nice & sorry to see they sold. Mine sits in my desk now :/
Limitless used to be Rewind that maintained one of the most useful pieces of software on my Mac, and I use a cracked version now because I refuse to give it up. There is nothing else like it yet. I seem to recall some other thing that aims to be similar, but that might be cross-platform or otherwise Linux-ish which discounted it as a practical alternative. (I don't remember its name unfortunately)
Yes. The issue with Meta glasses and those pendants are that they are designed for concealment, designed to invade the privacy of other people.
Some might argue that mobile phones can also be used to make secret recordings. However, they are not primarily designed for this and it is a side-effect of being a multifunctional tool. However, whenever anyone uses Meta glasses or their pendants in public, one should assume that they may behave maliciously and take appropriate action against such ppeople. Those people will only learn if we collectively decide that punching and breaking their stupid glasses is the right way to handle this.
You say the wrong thing, wear the wrong thing, look disheveled or whatever and the asshole with the KGB glasses records it. Then MoistCunt (always forget the real name) on Twitch makes a "reaction video" and 35 million of his dumb minions hate you forever if you dare to appear on the Internet.
What products has Meta developed internally after Facebook that have been a success? I am actually asking this question, it seems like they have only had success purchasing already ramping products, plowing cash into them, and cross-integrating them into their product set. Why wouldn't they just continue to lean into that profile and wait for people with actual good ideas solve this.
Facebook marketplace killed craigslist, I guess?
Sure, it's part of Facebook but it's not the same as the core product.
Threads? They have 400m monthly active users and 100m+ daily active users. Though, its userbase likely does not intersect with your interests.
Meta Ray-Ban glasses are also a massive success.
I really doubt that 400M number. They try to get me to login to Threads see comments on Instagram posts. Technically I am monthly "active" user, but not really.
I see more Bluesky links in the wild than Threads and they claim only 27M users.
Threads is taking off in regions likely irrelevant to your interests (India, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, etc). The content on Threads covers national politics and local social issues, which would typically not be shared on a tech forum like this one.
Tech news is still dominated by X and bluesky, so naturally those content sources appear more here.
Threads is an internally developed Twitter clone when Twitter launched in 2006 and Threads launched in 2023? I'm not saying they didn't build it, but it was not an original product design; they waited until there was already a market, launched and deployed it to Facebook users. I will give you the Ray-Ban glasses, but even that was a product that is a better version of Google Glass, so still not really a unique product.
Sure, it's not original or unique, but that wasn't your question. Facebook itself wasn't particularly unique when it launched.
The person is likely going through the 5 stages of coping.
1. The product isn't useful
2. The product is useful but nobody is using it.
3. Ok, a lot of people are using it but nobody is buying it.
4. Ok, some people are buying it but the product is not innovative. Somebody invented it first. <--- the person is here.
5. Ok, the product is innovative but it's not like it will cure cancer!!!
i am surprise ai glasses are not more popular. i would love to wear those to appliance store and get info about appliance quickly.
is there any alternative ray ban meta . i hate buying from zuck.
Why would you want zuck to see everything that you see when you put on tte ray bans?
Why was it trivial for FB to scale WhatsApp from 450,000,000 users at acquisition to over 3,300,000,000 now?
Seems like an insane achievement to scale a messaging service to half of the world.
8x scaling over a time period where the available size and performance of single-image systems increased by more than 8x seems… if not trivial, at least not an “insane achievement.”
Scaling a product like that is an incredible engineering achievement, but I am speaking specifically about product development. What other products has Facebook innovated internally, worked through the product-market fit, and scaled itself? Again, my point is that they have a ton of resources and a huge existing user base, but the only successes they seem to have are purchasing companies that are ramping. They deploy engineers and connect to the existing user base, but they aren't innovative in product design.
facebook itself is a myspace or nexopia clone
the targetting pixel and like button are the most obvious innovations?
facebook is a tool for building products on, rather than a product in and of itself.
“Scaling” as in “making sure the infrastructure can handle much higher load”, or as in “making sure the product remains genuinely useful to people, so that the user numbers go up and not down”? For both, it didn’t happen by itself, but it’s far from rocket science. A sane team of 15-20 people can do it.
Was it just because WhatsApp was already generally well designed when they purchased it?
I think that might be common enough these days through sound horizontal scaling principals and especially services that scale for you, but Whatsapp launched in 2009, pretty much the turning point for the tech that enables "web scale".
At that time AWS was just rolling out ELB and RDS, people were still fulfilling their (and most) roles on EC2 servers or even more likely dedicated servers / VPS that took day(s) to commission and might have even been setup by hand, there was no Docker, GitHub was new and Actions, Jenkins etc were years away, and there were very few PaaS- or IaaS-type offerings IIRC just a very nascent Heroku and Google App Engine.
WhatsApp was built on Erlang, though, which was built to scale in the 80s.
ejabberd right?
Why anyone would pay money for meta to collect their entire life of data is beyond me.
Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp are already free.
no, verrrrry expensive
https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2026/05/26/big-tech-ext...
these "free" products are hugely, mind-bogglingly, yet invisibly expensive
They acquired Limitless AI in 2025 which had pivoted from “record and rewind anything on your Mac” to a hardware pendant “granola for everything” product. It was not in market for very long prior to the acquisition.
Hardware was very nice & sorry to see they sold. Mine sits in my desk now :/
Was there any ongoing support there? Or do you basically have a fancy paperweight?
Limitless used to be Rewind that maintained one of the most useful pieces of software on my Mac, and I use a cracked version now because I refuse to give it up. There is nothing else like it yet. I seem to recall some other thing that aims to be similar, but that might be cross-platform or otherwise Linux-ish which discounted it as a practical alternative. (I don't remember its name unfortunately)
Just like the Meta glasses sent your video feeds to Kenya [1] this one will send the soul of your firstborn there
[1] : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/17/kenyan-ou...
It should be within your rights to apply violence if someone records you with Meta glasses or with this pendant without your consent.
Why? Its not for any other camera and its insane you think it is.
Even in public?
Yes. The issue with Meta glasses and those pendants are that they are designed for concealment, designed to invade the privacy of other people. Some might argue that mobile phones can also be used to make secret recordings. However, they are not primarily designed for this and it is a side-effect of being a multifunctional tool. However, whenever anyone uses Meta glasses or their pendants in public, one should assume that they may behave maliciously and take appropriate action against such ppeople. Those people will only learn if we collectively decide that punching and breaking their stupid glasses is the right way to handle this.
> Some might argue that mobile phones can also be used to make secret recordings
Not to mention that doing so is a felony in a two-party consent state.
What kind of worse case scenario is running through your mind to be this upset? Not saying it doesn't exist I just would like to know.
You say the wrong thing, wear the wrong thing, look disheveled or whatever and the asshole with the KGB glasses records it. Then MoistCunt (always forget the real name) on Twitch makes a "reaction video" and 35 million of his dumb minions hate you forever if you dare to appear on the Internet.
Related: "You Bought Zuck’s Ray-Bans. Now Someone in Nairobi Is Watching You Poop."
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/04/you-bought-zucks-ray-ba...