00:00With the popularity of the Muse Assistant and the introduction of new devices,
00:04what does that mean for how Meta positions itself as a company moving forward?
00:08Minda Smiley, senior analyst at E-Markets is with us.
00:11What is Meta now?
00:13Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.
00:14I have to say, you know, echoing what you and Riley said, I definitely did not.
00:20Tamagotchi was certainly not on my bingo card for Meta this week, but it's not surprising.
00:25I mean, I feel like experimentation has been the name of the game for Meta over the past, you know,
00:30several years,
00:31starting with the metaverse, which we saw didn't exactly work out.
00:34But now we're looking at everything from smart glasses to AI to subscriptions to now Charm.
00:40And so I think it's clear that Meta is really trying to chart its next chapter, I think, both from
00:47a hardware perspective,
00:48but also kind of really moving beyond what is really its bread and butter, which is Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp.
00:54That's still the core part of its business.
00:57But I don't think moving forward it wants to be so associated with social media in general.
01:03This week the world said Muse is really good.
01:06You know, it's topping the charts on the Apple Store free downloads chart.
01:10It moved markets.
01:13I've been playing with it a lot, trying to get some actual useful stuff.
01:16There's some limits on what you can get into through APIs.
01:19Is Meta good at personal AI?
01:23Yeah, I mean, I think coming out of the gate, it has gotten a lot of great feedback and positive
01:29feedback.
01:30I think, you know, I think Meta over the past few years has gotten a lot of flack for and
01:34criticism for its AI strategy.
01:36This seems to potentially be a turning point.
01:38But I think, you know, I think we all need to pump the brakes a little bit.
01:45I'm going to jump in here because I think we've lost Linda's shot for a second.
01:49I think you might be back.
01:51Oh.
01:52Technology, eh?
01:53Am I still there?
01:54Yes, you are.
01:54I think I'm still there.
01:55Okay.
01:56Anyway, I was saying that pretty much I think we need to kind of pump the brakes a little bit.
02:01I mean, we saw it only came out a few weeks ago.
02:05And I'm going to draw a parallel to last year when Vibes and Sora came out, which were the social
02:11AI video features.
02:13There was, you know, there was a lot of hype around that.
02:16What does this all mean?
02:17And then now, I mean, Sora doesn't even exist anymore.
02:19And Vibes, I mean, I never hear anything about Meta Vibes anymore.
02:22And so this does seem to be a little bit different.
02:25But I think at this point, I think there are some clear use cases that people are finding valuable.
02:31But I think there is also a world where a lot of this, you know, kind of goes awry or
02:36is somewhat of a fad, to be honest.
02:39It's interesting because actually for much of the pre-market, Meta was down.
02:42It's now up almost 3%, whether that's directly correlated to last night or not.
02:46Look, when Ray-Ban Metas came out, everyone was a bit surprised.
02:51Even in my reporting, Meta was surprised at the success of that.
02:55Now they have a range of devices that they believe are the right form factors to interact with AI.
03:03At the end of the day, have they got it right or not?
03:07Yeah, I think it's hard to say at this point.
03:10I'm not completely sold that smart glasses are the future.
03:13I mean, it's interesting.
03:14I was even thinking about this last night with the announcement of Charm.
03:18I mean, Meta has put so much stock in smart glasses, right?
03:21And a lot of these companies have, saying they're the future.
03:23They're going to be the new smartphone.
03:24It's going to be the way we interact with technology.
03:27And then to kind of come out of left field with Charm, this Tamagotchi-esque device,
03:32it's sort of like, wait, I thought smart glasses were the next big thing.
03:35And I think there's a lot of questions around like, well, wait, what do I use my phone for versus
03:39my smart glasses versus my Charm if I want to buy that?
03:42So I do wonder if by leaning into this experimentation with the hardware so heavily,
03:47they're kind of sending some mixed messages to the market in terms of, well, how do you use these different
03:52devices
03:53and what one is best for certain tasks versus others?
03:56And maybe just moving a bit too fast, to be honest.
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