Losing Original Purpose

There are some commercial organisations that lose their original purpose .....

 

Poundland Store "Everything's £1"

..... sometimes its deliberate and by design, as they change focus e.g. start chasing revenues, and sometimes they are simply overtaken by events.

 

So for instance, the Poundland shops (Dealz in Europe?, or I guess dollar shops in the USA), are simply hostages to fortune and inflation. Such is the unfortunate case of the currently financially successful Poundland store chain in the UK .... but they have had to admit that more than 10 per cent of their stock retails at more (often several times more), than one pound sterling (£1) .... I guess that they were always going to find that to be the case long-term. 

 

But now they are faced with a marketing dilemma. Long term, do they stick with that well known, but probably increasingly incorrect name, or change to something else? In the meantime they have recently announced that they are now doubling the number of items it sells for £1 or less across its stores as part of a cost of living drive, as the posted a 17.1% rise in third-quarter revenue in July 2022.

However what it does sell for £1 is sometime not worth that amount, as other shops such as B&M Stores, or Home Bargains, often offer the same products at similar or lower prices in the form of multi-packs .... I was once that stores biggest defender, as it was incredibly useful for those small men's DIY or car jobs that crop only rarely (so you didn't want to spend loads of money on tools/items that you would only use once or only rarely). 

 

Now however I only go in to Poundland for nothing like that (they have virtually removed male interest items anyway, in an apparent move to cheap women's / kids clothing and other areas such as chilled foods), so I just buy the odd thing such as Carex shower gel if its a large size for a pound.

But there are other organisations that appear to deliberately set out to derail themselves ..... take for instance Facebook. Its original aim was to allow students, and then later its original users to talk and post to, and see their friends posts. They could make these public or private posts. But you always your saw these posts in latest order.

Roll on a few years, and now, I am faced with a slew of adverts (often very unrelated to me), or posts by random groups, and even old friends posts, rather than friends recent posts, because Facebook have deemed that I haven't interacted enough with some or all of them. It also suggests 'people you may know' as possible friends. These people have absolutely no relation to my work, current friends, or location. Many of these people live in the Indian subcontinent ... and I have never even been there.

Then there is the 'sign up 15 more friends to see more posts' message - how f*cking intrusive and paternalistic of them!! .... talk about losing your way. This is no longer a useful tool for keeping in touch.

Now I post even less (which in any case I suspect very few of my friends get shown, under Facebook's not interacting enough algorithm), and I have stopped looking at people you may know, and have to wade through those large adverts, and old friends posts, to see if any one has posted anything that Facebook considers I should be shown. If it wasn't because I can message the friends in my group via the app, then I would drop Facebook completely.

They are now apparently obsessed with the idea of the metaverse aka 'Horizon Worlds,' this is the broad concept of an all round online interactive lifestyle .... but it just so happens that Facebook control all parts of it (and incidentally set the rules of how you use it, and what preferences you are allowed to set). Its all supported by some of the worst graphics devised by programmer's since 1999 .... no really ... look at this ...

Mark Zuckenburg's Avatar

 

This is Mark Zuckenburgs own avatar in a horizon world, complete with tiny trees .... the new reality is apparently a bleak and lifeless place, that Meta (as we should really call Facebook these days) thinks we will all be happy to work and play in .... apparently the poor graphics and legless avatar bodies (didn't I mention that?), is because you can’t actually wear a PS5 on your face ... the meta headsets can't support the software required for the decent graphics seen in games these days.

Now judging by the interference that Facebook shows in just one little part of that metaverse, I would never dream of signing up to the rest of it. I think that they have lost the plot .... the software they offer should be a support to modern life, not actually a lifestyle experienced in the house on a sofa. Obviously in the end, its all a case of Meta monetizing all your life activities, via a series of data-rich social interactions under a monitored structure (Yes your actions will be officially spied on to make it 'a safe' metaverse).

But within that 'safe' structure all your actions can be observed and data extracted about your tastes, habits and work and friends network, presumably in order to push you towards tailored advertisements.  I am assuming that these adverts may even feature inside the virtual reality (VR) world as you walk around, shades of Blade Runners dystopian future ... but with out the high value graphics.

Blade Runners CGI Advertising ....

Who knows, perhaps all this is what generation Z really wants ..... if so, they can keep it ....