Meta has had very few original ideas across its lifetime. Facebook was a clone of social media precursors. It was just polished so slick and shiny that nobody could see what a turd it was. Instagram came from outside the company. So did WhatsApp. Pretty much every ‘feature’ and addon launched under Mark Zuckerberg’s banner is either a blatant copy job or a purchase that started outside the company. And now there’s another one.
The New York Times reports that something ‘new’ is brewing inside the social media giant. It’s called “Arena” internally, and it’s Meta’s own take on Polymarket and Kalsi. You know, the so-called “prediction market” products that are somehow different from other forms of online betting?
Meta plays the odds
Arena will, according to unnamed internal sources, operate independently of Meta’s other platforms. That would be Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Unlike Polymarket and other similar platforms, it’ll supposedly avoid using real-world money for betting. At least, that’ll be the case at first. Instead, it’ll use something like Microsoft Points. That virtual currency Zuckerberg was rumoured to be working on in 2022 could see use here.
Assuming the project gets off the ground — the company is said to be working on several different others — its choices are likely being made for regulatory reasons. Tying a betting app into its existing ecosystem threatens everything else. Adding real-world money makes a global launch a massive pain in the… everything, really. The market is potentially lucrative, given all the fun the Polymarket guys seem to be having. Plus, Meta has 3.5 billion users to shunt its shiny* new** thing*** in front of.
Its other reported project, Meta Photos, is likely being developed in response to Google Photos scaling back on its free storage. That one, at least, would be easier to get off the ground. Hey, how has Threads been doing lately?
Promises, promises
This whole report, and most of the company’s past behaviour, illustrates just how devoid of imagination Meta is. The closest we’ve come to an original thought, ever, was the so-called metaverse. Even that was a functional concept as far back as the 1980s (and probably further). Zuckerberg’s company rebranded to push toward this ambitious future and then kinda… stopped. Other projects have been similarly ill-fated. Remember Facebook’s Live Audio Rooms? Heck, remember Facebook Live? Exactly.
There are other reasons to believe that Arena (whatever it winds up being called) will be an utter garbage fire if it’s ever launched. First of all, Meta has promised in the past that various functions and entities would remain separate from the company monolith. None of those promises has ever been kept. There’s no reason to expect this claim — even if it’s still unsubstantiated — to remain true for longer than it is convenient for Meta to pretend it listens to users.
It gets worse
While Arena, in its current, totally-not-betting state, could prove a disaster for Meta, there’s a worse outcome. What if the company launches the product and it takes off? Polymarket and friends have their followings, but they’re also niche in their own way.
If Mark Zuckerberg’s company dumps an online betting platform on a bunch of folks who don’t know any better, the results could be disastrous. Imagine the issues caused by South Africa’s sports betting landscape, but on a global scale?
The one thing Meta has been consistently good at (when its projects don’t fail outright) is sanding the rough edges off something and making it palatable to as many users as possible. Doing that with a betting platform might be in the company’s interests, sure. But is it in the users’ interest? Do you think anyone at Meta has even considered asking the question?
About the only upside to Meta’s late, as always, foray is that regulators globally are starting to take notice of the various platforms springing up to separate customers from their money. If Arena gets to the pre-launch stage, it’ll likely run face-first into fresh regulation. This could go either way. Either Meta bails on the project entirely (saving the world in the process), or it launches just in time to comply just enough to doom us all.
*polished turd?
**definitely not new
***absolutely a ‘thing’
