🍪 Why Meta copies everything

Happy Thursday, friends! It's officially the second half of 2022.

Let’s not talk about it.

In the oven this week:

• 👯 Why Meta copies everything

• 🍪 5 bite-sized cookies and a very important poll

• 💭 How to remember stuff you learn

• 😂 Snickerdoodles - memes for the weekend

WHY META COPIES EVERYTHING

This week, Meta found its next target to copy: Discord. 

Apparently, Facebook groups are getting channels. At this point, they don’t even try to hide the resemblance - they’ve used the same purple branding and a gaming example in their press release.

But this is just one of many copycat moves Meta has made over the years. Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane:

• Discord = Channels in FB Groups

• Tiktok short form video and editor = IG Reels and remix

• Snapchat Stories = IG Stories

• Twitch = FB gaming

• Clubhouse = FB live audio

• Periscope = FB live video

• Myspace = FB

FB has basically become a Frankenstein of anything that’s ever been popular in social.

No hate to the copying game though - it’s not a crime and it happens all the time.

But Keith Rabois has a good clue as to why Meta seems to clone everything in its path.

Keith Rabois is:

• ​​Super smart

• An OG Silicon Valley legend: ex-Paypal mafia, Square, LinkedIn, Opendoor

• General partner at Founder’s Fund and early investor in Facebook

• A big asshole

His take: Meta’s strength is business smarts, not innovation.

Give Zuck something that’s working and he’ll take it to the moon. Just look at what he did with Instagram, WhatsApp, and even Oculus.

But tell him to come up with something new and you get stuff like the Facebook phone.

Rabois likens Zuck’s style to Bill Gates, who was more of a shrewd businessman, rather than Steve Jobs, who saw the future and created it.

If creativity was money, Meta would be pretty much broke.

So what do you do when you need ideas for the group project, but everyone in your group comes up empty handed?

Copy and paste babyyy. You get a working idea, plus, copying is a LOT easier than navigating uncharted territory.

What does this mean for Meta’s future and the metaverse?

Our prediction is that they’ll struggle until they can acquire a company that’s proven they can make the metaverse work. Antitrust is raining hard on their parade right now, but in the long run, we wouldn’t bet against Zuck - if anyone can make meta happen it’s him.

COOKIE CRUMBS

• 🎥 Vidcon happened for the first time since 2019, and it was all about short form content. Youtube, which has been VidCon's top sponsor since 2013, was replaced with TikTok, and both the attendees and attractions leaned noticeably younger. Feels like the end of an era. Still, Mr. Beast managed to make an appearance, with a 40ft gum ball machine in tow.

• ☠️ Sam Bankman-Fried (the CEO of FTX) warns us to proceed with caution - many crypto exchanges are secretly insolvent (i.e. not able to pay out everyone who withdraws their $$). Lately, he’s had the whole crypto industry on his back, doling out almost a billion dollars in loans to companies about to go under. He's basically been a human ATM.

• 👻 Snapchat launches Snapchat+ for $4/month, which gives you a bunch of random features like the ability to change the app icon and being able to see which people have rewatched your Stories. Snap’s under lots of pressure to make more money, but do people care enough to pay up? We’re skeptical.

• 📺 Speaking of companies that need to make more money... Netflix is creating an ad-supported subscription tier that will arrive at the end of 2022 and will also start charging people who share their accounts with multiple people. Ugh.

• 🪥 Apparently, you’re not supposed to rinse the toothpaste from your mouth after you brush your teeth. According to dentists, you want to leave the toothpaste on your teeth so that the fluoride in it can do its thing. Is life just one giant lie?!

HOW TO RETAIN WHAT YOU LEARN

Ever wonder how smart people remember stuff? How is it that they’re able to remember the smallest details while I can barely keep track of what I ate for lunch today?

Sure, there’s a lot of conventional ways to do it - repetition, taking notes, discussing in a group, etc.

Problem is, people like me are lazy and almost never do any of those things.

But since we’re all consuming information 24/7, it'd be great to have a hack to remember more of it.

Sahil Bloom (successful creator + tech investor) has a great podcast for this, but I’ve cherry picked the best parts to save you time.

Here’s 2 ways to retain the stuff you learn without doing much more work:

#1 Learn more about what you like

Forced consumption is the book you're told to read in school. Read enough to get the book report done and you’re outta there.

Inspired consumption is getting on TikTok to watch Dave Portnoy stuff himself with pizza. You genuinely wanna know if Costco pizza is garbage.

Turns out, inspiration gets you in flow. And more flow state = more retention.

Inspiration also gets you to engage. You laugh, send the video to a friend - maybe you even look up the pizza place to see what the hype is all about. Engage with the content, retain the content.

Seek inspired consumption. Quit learning stuff you don’t like.

#2 Draw comparisons (i.e. “This is almost exactly like this other thing I know!”) 

This is where you take your newly-learned info and connect it to something else you know based on some theme or analogy.

Kinda like seeing someone at a party and realizing it looks like someone you know.

The new thing you learned gets to ride on the coattails of that connection, so the next time you see Larry King, you’ll always think of Mr. Burns.

Most of us don't do this normally, but when we start looking, the connections start sprouting up everywhere.

Try it the next time you see or hear something you want to remember.

SNICKERDOODLES

What'd you think about this email?

• 🍪🍪🍪 Top notch!

• 🍪🍪 Meh... could use more milk

• 🍪 Undercooked, do better