Musk’s Twitter to Zuckerberg’s Meta, how bad decisions have made 2022 tech’s annus horribilis

But in Twitter, content moderation has become a tricky thing and no one really knows when rules will change again. The recent suspension of high-profile journalists’ accounts (later reinstated) shows that Twitter in the Musk era has become predictable and tied to the whims and fancies of its new owner.

Musk may want to be seen as a champion of free speech but he’s the same man who has also removed critics of his policies from the company. All this has impacted Twitter’s credibility and has it staring at an uncertain future. If Twitter fails, it could be the beginning of the decline of the social media we know today. And if it gets saved by Musk, it might end up being a different beast altogether.

Meta’s Horizon Worlds is an app that allows users to gather with others, play games and interact in a virtual space. (Image credit: Meta)

The world isn’t ready for Zuckerberg’s Metaverse, at least, for now

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in a spot. The billionaire has his job cut out trying to take his company out of the radar of regulators and legislators both in the US and Europe. But he seems more engrossed with experiments around the Metaverse. But so far, the gamble on the Metaverse, which can be loosely defined as a virtual world where people live, work and play, have been a big flop.

Meta has lost a staggering amount of money on the alternate reality platform already. But it is unable to create a sticky product for its users. The problem isn’t the intention; it’s just that only a limited number of people want to work with a VR headset on or socialise with friends in a virtual world. That is scary, because Zuckerberg spent billions on the Metaverse thinking over time people would interact as cartoon avatars in 3D social spaces with a VR headset. That is far from the original vision Zuckerberg had about how the Metaverse would turn out to be. Zuckerberg was so confident about the Metaverse that he changed the identity of the company last year, from a social media firm to “a metaverse company”.

Wall Street, however, didn’t like the path Zuckerberg chose to be on. The company’s ad business is fast shrinking and the cut-throat competition from TikTok has made Facebook a less buzzing social media platform. Despite uncertainties, Meta is still a mammoth company but the fortunes of Zuckerberg’s social media empire are changing fast. Meta, as of now, is more vulnerable to a fast-changing tech landscape than any other silicon valley major. It recently laid off 13 per cent of its staff or more than 11,000 employees.

Instead of fixing the problem of its core business, Meta is jumping from one business and venturing into another one. That has put a question mark on Zuckerberg and the vision he has for the company. With several high-profile exits Meta has seen in the past few months, experts paint a not-so-positive outlook for the company that kick-started the social media revolution.

All tese years Amazon is selling its hardware products at a cost to grab the market share. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

Failure of Amazon Alexa

When Amazon recently announced a plan to lay off some 10,000 employees, one of the areas hardest hit was the Alexa voice assistant unit. It may come as a shock to many but the Alexa division hasn’t made money in years. Amazon’s business model to sell hardware at first cheap cost and push Alexa voice assistant through smart speakers has cost the company dearly.

On paper, Amazon may have dominated the smart speaker market and that eventually helped Alexa to become the hub for IoT devices. But the strategy has not paid off in the many years Alexa has been around. The initial idea was that people would shop more on Amazon through the Alexa voice assistant.

In reality, however, Alexa was mostly used for inconsequential conversations like providing “weather forecasts” or “playing music”. Amazon made no money from either the Alexa or the hardware it sells at a subsidised cost. The lack of monetisation opportunities and unclear path have made Amazon lose interest in Alexa.

The new iPad (2022) has been criticised for odd design choices. (Image credit: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express)

Apple’s 10th gen iPad turns out to be a ‘confusing’ product

Nobody had anticipated Apple to go horribly wrong with its entry-level iPad. It has always been a tried-and-tested device, an iPad designed for students and mainstream users. But the end product was less satisfying, unusual for an Apple device. The 10th-generation iPad came with a fresh design that puts it closer to the iPad Air, a faster A14 Bionic chipset and new accessories. All sounds good, right? But, once you start dissecting the device, its flaws start appearing.

The new iPad only works with the 1st generation Apple Pencil. But, since it features a USB-C port instead of Lightning, you need an adapter to charge it with the new iPad. The 10th generation iPad also doesn’t work with the Magic Keyboard. Instead, Apple has released the Magic Keyboard Folio, a new keyboard accessory exclusive to the entry-level iPad.

This new iPad is considerably more expensive (starting at Rs 44,900) than the 9th generation iPad it replaces, which surprisingly hasn’t been discontinued and continues to be available in the market.

One wonders how the new iPad got cleared internally despite the odd design choices. After a long time, we have seen an Apple product that is frustrating and underwhelming.

Bankman-Fried’s fall has shocked the crypto world. (Erika P. Rodriguez/The New York Times)

Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse

The bankruptcy of the crypto giant FTX and the arrest of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried has sent shockwaves in the crypto world. Once seen as the rising superstar in crypto circles, FTX quickly grew to be the third-largest exchange by volume under the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried. Low trading fees, high-profile acquisitions and aggressive marketing strategies all helped FTX to grow exponentially in the past few years.

But the empire Bankman created started to fall when his company was accused of using customers’ deposits to fund bets at Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, a violation of US securities law. The collapse of FTX has brought more scepticism for cryptocurrencies at a time when the industry has seen a fair share of volatility and turmoil amid a sharp decline in price for bitcoin and other digital assets.

The FTX collapse teaches investors that there will always be high risk in an unregulated financial industry. The debate about how cryptocurrency should be classified and regulated has intensified amid the FTX collapse.