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Technology companies, like people, don’t always make smart decisions. When they make truly disastrous ones, those are the mic drop moments. Today’s show takes a leap through the Portal.

Produced by Jeff Sandhu for BFM

Episode Transcript:
What’s on your mind?
•Facebook. They’ve done something silly, again.
•And this time, it’s a genuine mic drop moment.

The Portal?
•Back in 2012 Mark Zuckerberg told the world that Facebook was not in the business of making hardware.
•Jump to October 2018 and FB is making hardware. Specifically, a voice activated communication screen that works rather like Amazon’s Echo devices.

To be fair, Facebook has been in the hardware game for a few years, since it bought over Oculus, the Virtual Reality specialist.
•Yes, but that was as much about bringing FB up to speed with VR in general.
•Not because the company wanted to become the world leader in moleman goggles.

The Portal device has been on the cards for a long time. Reports suggest it was delayed for 6 months.
•And the reasons for that delay are one of the reasons we’re talking about it today.
•Regular listeners will probably have noticed that we don’t pay much attention to gadget releases on this show.
•So gadgets have to be very very good or very very bad in order to grab our attention.

I’ll take a guess. The Portal is very very good?
•I think the Portal may end up belonging in category roughly alongside the Smart hairbrush we loved so much last year.
•For those of you who really don’t care about these things and who haven’t heard what Facebook is up to this week the Portal and that’s with a capital P, is a smart communication device, Bluetooth speaker, Home hub etc etc with a big screen.
•It’s essentially Facebook Messenger with a screen.

And it’s ugly? It’s slow? It doesn’t work at all?
•None of those things.
•One of the wonders of the particular age that we find ourselves in is that there are very few truly bad electronic devices.
•Yes, of course, you can find yourself in trouble if you opt for those generic brands but don’t meet international safety requirements and all that kind of stuff.
•By and large, anything that comes out of a reputable company is usually half decent in terms of build and design and functionality.
•But that’s not the same as saying you need it or it’s a good idea.