#43 Zuckerberg's Meta Strategy Success, plus Smartglasses, WhatsApp, BlueSky and AI Learning Like A Baby

Rick Huckstep and Shaun Weston discuss Meta's magnificent results, their Ray-Ban smartglasses v the Apple VisionPro, WhatsApp interoperability and Bluesky Social in episode 43 of Big Tech Little Tech.

Feb 14, 2024

🎙️ Ep43 of The Big Tech Little Tech Podcast

Hi there listeners, Shaun and Rick have just dropped episode 43 of the podcast that takes a not so serious look at the seriousness of tech.

Meta’s meteoric return to success

The lead story for the show focuses on Meta and the success/turnaround that Mark Zuckerberg has le justd for the world’s largest social media business. In a couple of years, the Zuck has turned the largest one-day LOSS in Wall Street history into the largest one-day GAIN in history. This is the ebb and flow of renaming Facebook to Meta, pivoting to the metaverse, pouring billions into virtual reality research, before focusing 2023 on cutting costs and quickly shifting gear into AI.

The results were spectacular and the markets responded accordingly. But that’s not all that Rick and Shaun look at with Meta, because there are also the rise of wearables and the partnership with Ray-Ban. Meta’s success with these smart glasses comes as Apple’s first generation Vision Pro virtual reality glasses hit the American Apple stores. What does it all mean, where are we headed and why should we be bothered?

Oh, and don’t forget that Facebook turned 20 years old this week. A journey that started with making Zuckerberg the youngest Wall Street billionaire at just 24 years old…now look at him!

WhatsApp calling Messenger, can you hear me?

Meta’s WhatsApp have plans to bring interoperability to the messaging app. What does that mean and why? In a nutshell, new EU regulations require large platforms to play nicely with other, smaller platforms. Just like email, where it doesn’t matter what email service you use, you still get to send and receive messages…well the same is coming for messaging apps.

First up will be WhatsApp and Messenger. But the plans include the option for other apps, like Signal, to also speak with and through WhatsApp. It’s a big deal!

Bluesky Social soldier on

Twitter alternative Bluesky has moved out of demo mode and into full production. This means anyone can set up an account and use the Jack Dorsey app. You’ll know Dorsey as the engineer that found himself leading Twitter in the formative days and will forever be known as “the founder of Twitter.”

Well, Bluesky is Dorsey’s attempt to build a completely different type of app to do what Twitter does. It’s early days and like all new social tech, it’s not much use when nobody’s on it, which is why Bluesky are now ramping up users.

For the rest of the show

Rick’s Tech of the Week is Brilliant Labs' Frame smart glasses that offer an in-built AI assistant and the ability to capture images and find information about them in real-time. Whereas Shaun continues his love affair with the Arc browser from The Browser Company of New York.

To wrap up the show Shaun tells the AI story about deciphering ancient scrolls and showcasing the potential of AI in historical research and education. And Rick’s heartwarming final tale is about 2 year old Sam and how AI was trained to learn to speak just like Sam learnt to speak.

What a show!

Thanks for listening, keep the feedback, suggestions and questions coming in, and remember to share the show with your friends and colleagues.

That’s all for episode 43.

All the best, Rick & Shaun

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🙏 Show Credits

Additional music by Jason Shaw on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audionautix.com⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Beatoven.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠, Alex-Productions at Soundcloud, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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