What Lessons Can We Take from Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Goose Chase?

It seems like Facebook is losing its $100 bn gamble over Zuckerberg's Metaverse obsession

What a difference a year makes. Last October, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg could barely wait to show the world what he was up to. "Today, we're going to talk about the metaverse," he enthused in a slick video presentation. "I want to share what we imagine is possible." Transitioning almost seamlessly from his real self into a computer-generated avatar, Zuckerberg guided us through his vision for the virtual-reality future: playing poker in space with your buddies; sharing cool stuff; having work meetings and birthday parties with people on the other side of the world; customizing your avatar (the avatars had no legs, which was weird). It seems like Facebook is losing its $100bn gamble over Zuckerberg's Metaverse obsession.

According to The Guardian, Zuckerberg was so all-in on the metaverse, he even rechristened his company Meta. Meanwhile, Meta has invested a staggering $100bn on metaverse research and development to date, $15bn in the past year alone – with apparently little to show for it. Zuckerberg's metaverse obsession could be seen as a preemptive virtual land grab for what is generally agreed to be the future of the internet.

Zuckerberg's Metaverse plans

In 2021, Facebook announced to invest US$10 Billion in building metaverse and changed the company's name to Meta. The platform would allow users to communicate with friends, families, or colleagues using their digital avatars. Experts have anticipated that the metaverse will penetrate through many market spaces and industries as there will be a build-up of industries in the future. The revenue will be increasing incessantly. Meta was the first to take the initiative but nowadays, experts think that Meta will ruin the metaverse for everyone. Facebook says it wants to help fix misinformation running rampant across the internet — a problem it may have helped create in the first place.

Meta's reality labs focus on developing and researching metaverse-related projects includes three broad technologies, augmented reality, virtual reality, and social media platforms.

Zuckerberg mentioned that Meta is utilizing 80% of its time to develop the company's legacy social media suite of applications, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, with several others. The rest, 20% of the time, is utilized in developing software and hardware for the metaverse. The billionaire CEO also mentioned that he is not disturbed by the criticism the company faces in investing hugely in metaverse development and said, "skepticism doesn't bother me too much." He further added, "we had doubters the whole time."

This month, we saw a more subdued Zuckerberg on display: "I wanna say upfront that I take full responsibility for this decision," he told employees morosely. "This was ultimately my call and it was one of the hardest calls that I've had to make in the 18 years of running the company." Meta was laying off 11,000 people – 13% of its workforce. Poor third-quarter results had seen Meta's share price drop by 25%, wiping $80bn off the company's value. Reality Labs, Meta's metaverse division, had lost $3.7bn in the past three months, with worse expected to come. It wasn't all bad news, though: Zuckerberg announced last month that Meta avatars would at last be getting legs.

Meta Horizon World

When Meta Quest 2 first came out two years ago, most people spent their time in VR alone. The majority of time is now spent on multiplayer and social apps.

Now, Facebook Meta has announced the development of Meta Horizon Worlds in the web's metaverse segment, so you can ultimately pick up your phone or laptop and visit pals who are hanging out in VR, and vice versa. We also revealed new social ideas we're developing with the YouTube VR team. If you're in Meta Horizon Home with pals, you'll soon be able to view YouTube videos together.

Facebook Meta revealed their new generation of Meta Avatars for the metaverse, which will be more expressive and detailed as well as full-body avatars in VR, which will begin in Meta Horizon Worlds. Aside from VR, the Facebook Meta is introducing avatars to video chat, beginning with Messenger and WhatsApp, to allow you to express yourself and react without turning on your camera.

It could also represent an attempted second act, for both the 38-year-old and his somewhat tarnished Facebook brand. But the markets seem to be saying "count us out", and according to reports, just 58% of Meta's own employees said they understood the company's metaverse vision. Comments on the latest lay-offs in an anonymous employee survey included, "the metaverse will be Facebook's slow death" and "Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the metaverse".