In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg had announced an important news: Facebook has become Meta. The name change immediately highlighted the entrepreneur’s intention to tread the hand on the establishment of the “metaverso”, Or rather on the creation of a digital space that aims to replace today’s internet. A few months later, however, the futuristic enthusiasm shown by the eccentric head of the company seems to have greatly diminished.
According to some rumors collected by ReutersMeta’s CFO Andrew Bosworth allegedly revealed to employees of Reality Labsthe spearhead of Big Tech in the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) sector, thetemporary abandonment of some of the projects they had in hand. In other words, the company has “postponed” to a date to be defined some ideas that it can no longer afford to support.
According to the tax data published from Meta last February, the company’s investment in the metaverse reached in 2021 a cost of approximately 10 billion dollars. Such a “loss” would not be anomalous in itself, it is part of the financing for future business strategies, however a similar financial burden is colliding with a reality that is unwelcome to Zuckerberg: the public is not particularly interested in the metaverse, also because theand companies have not yet provided a precise and unambiguous definition of what it is.
From the promotional speeches that have been made it is clear that Big Tech would have a direct interest in setting up the new services, however it is not clear how these digital worlds could improve the lives of ordinary people. Not only that, the metaverse envisaged by Meta leans on expensive ones virtual reality and augmented reality viewerswhich in turn enormously restricts the pool of potential customers that the social network can draw on.
In this sense, the technology company is doing everything possible to change consumer habits and foresees the marketing of VR helmets suitable for different medium-high price ranges in the near future. However, the fear of the lenders is that such a commitment is weak and belated. Instead of concentrating on traditional services or exploiting the technology in use to design new ones, Meta relies on a development plan that requires the dissemination of a tool that most consider superfluous, useless and expensive.
The lame situation of the metaverse contributed to the collapse of the Big Tech stock market, plus Zuckerberg announced that in 2022 Reality Labs will hire fewer employees than those selected the previous year. Everything suggests that the growth of the sector, although it has not stopped, is running into a sharp slowdown and equally mistrust. Right now, Meta’s dream doesn’t seem to be a dream shared by the average user.
[di Walter Ferri]
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