Ben Thompson uses basketball to explain why Muse is now Meta’s franchise player, its AI models are the No. 2, and its glasses are Klay Thompson “In basketball, there’s this interesting dynamic that happens. Like, when a player is injured, or when a team acquires a player, say at the deadline, where you can have a team that seems woefully deficient, and you add one more player and they get way better. Not just because they added that player, but because everyone slots into a position that’s much more suited to them, right?” “Like, of course, you know what a number one needs to be. Everyone knows it’s coming; they still score. They draw the defense, they kick it out. You need a number two who can carry the offense when the number one’s on the bench, who can be a secondary playmaker. Depending on if number one is a distributor or not, if they’re not, they need to be a distributor. If number one is more distributor, number two needs to be a scorer.” “And then number three is basically the guy who you can put on the best player to defend and who will knock down every single open shot. And then you have the dirty guy who does all the dirty work.” Andrew Sharp: “It’s like, imagine the Knicks without Karl-Anthony Towns. Karl-Anthony Towns is the second-best player, and then he allows their role players, like OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, to slot into their proper roles, as opposed to asking those guys to do too much and being inevitably disappointed.” Ben Thompson: “So the problem is that if you’re missing your number two, then your number three seems worse because he’s a bad number two. Your number four seems worse because he’s a bad number three. It goes all the way down the chain. You can slot just one guy in, and a team gets massively better because everyone is now in their proper position.” “Meta’s problem is they were missing a number one.” “And what I mean is, the reason why the glasses seem compelling is not just because they’re small and thin. Even the VR ones, I thought it was a great reveal. Actually, they’ve been sitting out here the whole time and you didn’t notice because they look kind of like that. That was the best part, just from a showmanship perspective, because he kept saying, ‘Look, here’s all our glasses. Here are our glasses.’ He was kind of setting it up the whole time.” “Once you have Muse, and Muse is the thing, now you’re not selling VR glasses. You’re not selling AR glasses. You’re selling Muse delivery devices. And it’s so obvious Muse is something that wants to break out of the phone. You see it in your little app, up in the little corner, typing away and doing work for you. It’s like, ‘Oh, poor little Muse is stuck in my—’ You’re not thinking this clearly, but you’re getting a sense of, ‘I would like Muse in more places. How can I get it more?’” “Oh, Meta has devices on which I can interact with Muse. It isn’t ethereal AI glasses. These are now Muse glasses. Your little Tamagotchi is a Muse Tamagotchi. And that’s why that keynote comes along and feels so focused. It’s why you feel so excited. It’s because they had VR as their number one player. Yeah, not a number one player, right? They had kind of VR. They had AI as their number one player. Also not a number one player.” “Your number one player is a product that resonates, and the product doesn’t need to be pushed on people. People pull it because they want it. And once you have that pull effect, everything else slots into place.” “Muse is the number one. Their AI model’s number two. And the VR glasses—great number three. Klay Thompson: not a number two. Terrible number two. Can’t dribble the ball. The best number three in history. Locks down the opposing guards. Doesn’t miss a shot.” “And that’s why the glasses feel better now.”