Meta needs PVC: A Purpose, Vision and Charter

Summary: Meta-Facebook-Instagram's problems don’t start with A (AI) or end with Z (Zuckerberg). Think PVC ( purpose, vision, charter).

People still “Google” things, they don’t “Alphabet” them. Even as companies rush to Meta'size themselves, let's be cognizant that this is a company that knowingly sacrificed the wellbeing of children in its rapacious need to grow. The change of name is not going to distance us from the realities of this company. Beyond the ham-handed, change-the-narrative timing of the name-change, the re-brand fully-exposed everything that Facebook/Instagram repeatedly gets wrong.?It's certainly not fooling its own employees, since it pays a "brand tax" to recruit and retain them.

Purpose, vision, and charter, are the pillars of any business. Facebook/Instagram lacks all three, but it’s the first two that are worth focusing on, as they represent the company’s grandest failures.??

First, the metaverse is nothing new. Plenty of other companies — including several very prominent gaming companies — have been working on this for decades. Right now, tens of millions of people are online playing as avatars in Minecraft, Roblox, and countless other collaborative games.?

Facebook/Instagram is simply a player — albeit an incredibly large, incredibly well-capitalized player — entering a market that has been growing exponentially for years that FB/IG really missed out on. Much like within the social, messaging, and AR/VR spaces, the company will likely have to acquire its way to market-share. In other words, it has to buy the sorts of companies that it itself is not and cannot be. So, what is the purpose of Facebook??

Let’s look at the trajectory of the company's purpose. Facebook was started by an awkward young man to meet girls, evolved into a college-only public message board, then came scale and one of the largest advertising businesses to ever exist. The company’s official vision statement sounds perfectly fine, and that’s the point:

Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

The “what” is clear - connect. The “why” is a little less clear. Read that vision statement carefully, then read any of the myriad reports and investigations into all of the company’s missteps, and then read the vision statement again. There’s no answer to “why?” to be found. There is no doubt that the vast majority of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram users are well-meaning people who just want to be on social media. But Facebook — like YouTube, Twitter, and every other social platform, to be fair — has been astoundingly slow to address its very serious issues. In a lot of ways, that’s where purpose comes from.?

It’s perfectly fine and commendable to want to give people a voice and connect them to others, but the assumption that it would just be a bunch of aunts and grandfathers sharing pictures of kids playing and all laughs and smiles and likes is absurd. This grand vision statement includes nothing about safety, or wellbeing, or any other moral aspect of life. It’s simply about happy-go-lucky marketing terms like “connectedness” and, well, ”metaverse.”???

As a concept, the Metaverse - a separate universe that people live in to get away from the real world - seems at odds with the community building vision. I understand that some people actually use FaceBook this way, but let’s face it, the company’s product isn’t the community;? it’s the communications vehicle that the community uses that is then sold to advertisers.?

The company’s official values aren’t much different: Move fast, be open, build social value. If anything, the last few years have shown that the company’s impact has been negative to the point of costing lives; moving fast has led to epic failures in content moderation and misinformation proliferation; it hasn’t been open at all, as evidenced by the leaks and testimony from Frances Haugen and others; and its social value has never been under such close scrutiny.?

All of this comes down to the true purpose of Facebook and it’s meta-universe of satellite companies — optimizing its value per user to make money for its shareholders. When stripped down, that’s the purpose of any business, but Facebook is different and we all know it.?

It’s not just another company. It’s one of the original social media giants, and it wields a lot of power. It can affect elections, it can fuel genocide, and it’s a proven platform for the spread of disinformation. Even if these are edge cases, incredibly rare, and the result of a confluence of factors that few really saw coming, they are so major as to warrant the full attention of the company’s leadership. There have been hearings, fights in the court of public opinion, and more, but there have been no real consequences. Here’s our assertion - the lack of purpose has resulted in a company with little core unifying principles, driven by the central demagogue. Given the sheer SIZE of this young man’s influence, it’s not shocking that we hear about his micromanagement style, his authoritarian style, his questionable choices. Yes, the “shadow of the leader” is immense in any startup. In this case, there has been blow-back in the form of whistle-blowers who complain about a series of personal idiosyncrasies that have created conflict.?

Now, as Facebook becomes Meta (in so many ways), we’ve reached a point where there simply must be action. Facebook’s pioneering of the “user as a product” model has proven toxic. Given the company’s breadth across social media and messaging, and its leader’s clear preference for autocracy, we’d like to go out on a limb and declare - it’s high time to break the company up.?

There are broad swathes of the business world that can get by on money-making as a core set of principles, but Facebook is not one of them. Its footprint as a core communications and community-driving element sets it out from the others. It’s not a simple tech company.?

A strong purpose can also help drive a strong M&A strategy. Let’s look at what they have pulled together - a LARGE community of users, but each driven by different mechanisms. A hand on the controls could have managed the chaos better. I’d also wonder if they could have done a better job by incorporating units that were actively thinking of the ETHICS of AI, the practicalities of OBJECTIVITY, the mechanics of REAL vs. FAKE news.

For the degree of influence and power it had in the economy and global psyche, is it time to ask, can we the people force change in a company that keeps fiddling as our children burn.

#PurposeDrivenStrategy #M&Astrategy #PeopleFirst #DesignThinking #Customer-centric