How long will Mark Zuckerberg keep copying others to build Meta?
Meta is a staggering $766.13 billion company and employs thousands of people worldwide. We firmly believe that among these thousands, there must be hundreds dedicated to generating groundbreaking ideas, which could also involve adding new features to the existing ones. However, for years now, it seems that Meta has consistently "drawn inspiration" from others, as it appears to have run out of original ideas.
Meta's new app was built entirely using this keyboard: pic.twitter.com/RoRe6szEO0
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) July 6, 2023
Time and again, Meta has faced lawsuits on various fronts, including privacy concerns, allegations of meddling in American elections, and more. Yet, one aspect of civil cases that is often overlooked or lacks attention is copyright infringement.
Let's go back to the beginning: The foul play behind founding Facebook
If you have not seen the movie The Social Network, you should give it a try. Now if you're wondering why all of a sudden I am talking about a movie, here's the thing. The movie is about a lawsuit that was filed by Cameron Winklevoss, along with his brother Tyler Winklevoss, against Facebook.
- So, Cameron Winklevoss, along with his brother Tyler Winklevoss, filed a lawsuit against Facebook and its co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004. The lawsuit alleged that Zuckerberg had stolen their idea for a social networking website while they were all students at Harvard University.
- The Winklevoss twins claimed that they had hired Zuckerberg to work on their own social networking project called "HarvardConnection" (later renamed "ConnectU") and that he had taken their ideas and code to launch his own social networking site, which became Facebook.
The lawsuit accused Zuckerberg of breach of contract, fraud, and misappropriation of their intellectual property.
The settlement
In 2008, Facebook and the Winklevoss twins reached a settlement agreement.
- As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to pay the Winklevoss twins $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook stock.
- Additionally, the settlement included a non-disparagement clause, preventing either party from publicly criticising the other.
What happened to ConnectU, you ask? Facebook bought the domain and shut it down.
Umm, Facebook buying something isn't new? right?
This reminds us of Facebook's shopping endeavours, right? I am talking about WhatsApp and Instagram, but we'll get to that a bit later.
The copycat: Instagram Stories
Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for 1 billion dollars in 2012, and one of the latest updates that Zuck bought in for Snapchat, umm, Instagram was Instagram Stories.
- But by that time, Snapchat already had something called Snapchat stories, but since the idea was not patented by Snapchat, of course, there was no point in filling a copyright case.
- Instagram also introduced face filters, another feature that Snapchat was popular for.
Interstingly by mid-2018, Instagram Stories had twice as many daily users as Snapchat.
Then of course, the iconic Instagram Reels
We all are guilty of doom-scrolling Instagram reels till the end of time and your screen time on Instagram Reels drastically increases if you live in India, where TikTok is banned.
- It was on August 5, 2020, when Instagram stole (sorry, was inspired by) the idea of short videos from TikTok.
Instagram also had a long-form video format, very similar to YouTube.
But TikTok, even now, has far more users than Instagram Reels.
Threads v/s Twitter
Even though we might not see a Zuckerberg vs Elon Musk cage fight anymore, their two platforms are certainly fighting for users.
However, it seems like Twitter (now X) is winning easily.
- Launched on July 5, 2023, Threads became an instant success (in terms of the number of users) as it managed to cross 30 million signups in less than a day - thanks in part to the ease of setting up a profile using an existing Instagram account.
- If you still haven't used Instagram Threads like me and are wondering what the point of it is; well, you can share your thoughts and opinions within a certain word limit. Sounds pretty similar to Twitter, right?
- Another similar feature is that you can lock your Threads account, just like you can Twitter.
It started out hot and heavy, but Threads is now struggling to keep its users, according to several reports. It seems like they have lost their charm.
Apart from this, Meta (the parent company of Facebook), also recently added the WhatsApp Channel feature, which nobody likes, and something that again seems pretty similar to the one you have on Telegram and Discord.
READ MORE: Elon Musk says Musk vs Zuck cage fight will be livestreamed on X, Zuck hits back with a 2018 jibe
The latest copy: Chatbot AI
We saw the latest copy by Zuck yesterday (September 28), when he announced the launch of a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot for his biggest social media offerings - WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
- The new chatbot, named Meta AI, is powered by a ‘custom model’ which uses the company Llama 2 language model along with its latest large language model (LLM) research.
- The company announced, "Meta AI can give you real-time information and generate photorealistic images from your text prompts in seconds to share with friends".
But guess who already had a Chatbot AI already?
- Snapchat has something called Snapchat AI, which is a conversational AI in Snapchat's inbox.
How to make something 'new' at Meta
Here's what we think is the secret recipe for making a new feature at Meta: Find an interesting feature from your rival company, add a dash of "changes" to it, season it with a name change, and serve it as a new dish (feature) across all your channels; and from this tweet, it seems like he does accept the charges:
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
BRB, praying I don't get shadow-banned on Facebook after this article.