What happened to Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a meta-universe, and why his project ultimately failed.
Mark Zuckerberg and his team have become one of the hottest topics of the past few years. From receiving the largest ever fine under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (almost $1.3 billion) for exporting EU user data to the U.S., to falling stock prices, massive layoffs and, ultimately, the failure of the meta-universe project.
The dramatic decline of Facebook* (recognized by the Russian authorities as extremist and banned by the Russian Federation) demonstrates the ambitious and untouchable CEO and co-founder of Facebook.
The dramatic fall of Meta* (recognized by Russian authorities as extremist and banned in the country) demonstrates that Facebook’s ambitious and untouchable CEO and co-founder is in serious trouble. One of his grandiose meta-universe projects, Metaverse with a capital “M,” is ready to rest in the “pet graveyard” of the technology industry.
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Metashow
The tech giant ended 2022 with a 70% freefall. This made its stock the main outsider among all components of the S&P 500 Index. The company is in serious trouble, and the difficult transition from social networking giant Facebook to the world of virtual reality is making itself felt.
To understand what happened to the former Facebook and to the meta-universe project, we can start by stating the main reason that led the big tech company into its current hole.
The biggest problem was not Mark Zuckerberg’s foolish bet on the meta-universe. In fact, whichever product Meta decided to bet on going forward, it would likely have failed. As author Ted Gioia noted, “For Facebook, the user is always wrong.
It’s not hard for anyone in any kind of business to understand that the focus of any company, no matter how big or small, should be on customer-centricity.. Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp, and now Meta, serve one and only one purpose: profit for the apps and the people involved. And that’s what’s killing Zuckerberg’s empire.
The
False Promise
Zuckerberg relied on his tunnel vision that his meta-universe project was to be “the next big thing,” and it seduced just about everyone around him. He argued that the virtual world would become “an expanded and absorbing version of the Internet.
And now other major companies have followed his lead, with Walmart, Disney, Nike, and Gucci all joining the meta-universe. Zuckerberg also convinced investors, Wall Street and the media to share his obsession.
And they joined.
Source: YouTube
The half-baked project, as technology expert Ed Citron dubbed it, shook up the entire tech industry in a very short time. But Zuckerberg’s grand promise turned out to be just that… a promise. The Metaworld Project doesn’t have a clear business vision. Ultimately, there are no clear problems he could solve for the general public.
The CEO of Meta’s speech was filled with poetic adjectives, but it lacked a real concept of what it would do for the general public.
The Meta CEO’s speech about his next big endeavor was filled with poetic adjectives, but it lacked a real concept of what the Metaworld ll do for real life. Because of his incompetence in articulating a clear vision and the problems he planned to address, Meta’s ambitious project suffered without several things that most companies need to function properly: a clear and adequate explanation of why, a specific target audience, and a market’s willingness to accept the product.
Huge flaws
Now let’s break down these flaws.
Since the product owner himself couldn’t articulate what problems his meta-universe would solve, he couldn’t expect the public to understand it. In his own words:
“I think a lot of people, when they think of the meta-universe, think only of virtual reality, which I think will be an important part of that. […] But the metaworld is not only a virtual reality. It will be available on all of our various computer platforms: VR and AR, as well as on PCs, mobile devices, and game consoles. Speaking of which, many people also think of the meta-universe as something primarily related to games. And I think entertainment is definitely going to be a big part of that, but I don’t think it’s just games.”
When you read that, one wonders what he’s talking about.
When you read this, one wonders, “What is he talking about?”. He doesn’t describe anything here.. From what he says, the metacommuniverse could be anything. One might think that he is describing the Internet. Or a game? Or an app? A virtual world?
Megaputanica
The second problem is related to the first.. The definition of the meta-universe only creates more confusion rather than explaining what the term actually means. Not to mention the audience for which it is intended. Zuckerberg claimed that one billion people would use the Metaworld. Where did these numbers come from in the absence of a clear use case? And what gave rise to the belief that these people would spend hundreds of dollars each using his product.
Third, unless there is a genuine vision of what this thing does and what problems it solves, it’s not enough to say or believe that the founder of the world’s largest social network simply “knows what he’s doing.”
Meta stock fell 70% and closed 2022 with the worst performance among S&P 500 components. | Source: YouTube
It turns out that Wall Street, the tech industry, the media, and enthusiasts have bought into the Meta. In contrast to the broader public. Zuckerberg was wrong about us, the most important asset in the story.
Kind of sorry.
The public is tired of big corporations telling it what to do. If the media, the tech industry and investors couldn’t criticize Zuckerberg for pouring $10 billion into a product he couldn’t even describe, it was only a matter of time before the thing would be put to rest.
It was a matter of time before the media, the tech industry and investors were able to criticize Zuckerberg for pouring $10 billion into a product he couldn’t even describe.
Users of the meta-universe describe Horizon Worlds as “low-quality” and “too glitchy” and compare it to a children’s. In any case, this is clearly not what the public expects from a multibillion-dollar company. A company that claims that the Internet is the future. The idea that cartoon concerts and legless avatars will “change the world” is ridiculous.
Source: YouTube
The author of Business Insider called Zuckerberg a “liar” and his meta-universe a meaningless tool that distracts people “from their problems and creates fertile ground for the profiteering of truly evil people.”
It’s hard to believe that someone so powerful and influential could so blatantly lie and waste billions of dollars. However, Zuckerberg is not the first person to lie to make money from selling air and bloated lies. Remember Elizabeth Holmes’ promise to revolutionize blood testing with a $9 billion business? It ended up being a fraud.
King Mark
Mark Zuckerberg has built an empire that he will rule and remain untouchable no matter what he does. This means that he has built Meta in such a way that he has complete control over it. Even board members can’t touch him.
In spite of repeated failures in numerous endeavors such as Facebook Phone in 2013, the CEO of Meta bought Oculus for $1 billion.
Despite repeated failures in numerous endeavors, such as Facebook Phone in 2013, the Meta CEO bought VR company Oculus for $2 billion a year later and went belly-up.
Of course, his somewhat megalomaniacal vision of creating an “Internet of the future,” the idea of a digital world using virtual reality and avatars, goes back to the 1990s. To games like Meridian, The Realm Online and Ultima.
This suggests that his idea of a Metaviverse is not fundamentally flawed. Technology seems to be heading in the direction where widespread use of virtual reality will become inevitable. But if that future comes in 15 or 20 years, Mark Zuckerberg is ahead of himself. And it has dragged an entire industry with it.
Our smartphones are now almost an extension of our hands. Apple revolutionized the market with the iPhone, which brings together many products and services into one useful tool.
But Mark Zuckerberg is no Steve Jobs, and his Horizon World product is puzzling, to say the least.
Meta was trying to sell a revolutionary digital socialization tool. But for the general public, this may just mean a cumbersome way to play video games, and for the major gaming industry, another massively multiplayer online game. It’s easy to see the difference between Jobs’ and Zuckerberg’s vision of creating an innovative and revolutionary product.
Rest in peace, Metaworld.
Despite all the hype, the short-lived project collapsed in the absence of market followers. Meta could not even convince its own employees to use Horizon World. The Metaverse became seriously ill, as inflated market forecasts never materialized, while the Web3 industry began to turn its attention to the growing hype surrounding artificial intelligence.
Most companies that followed the path of false promises began shutting down projects in the Metacomplex. Walmart shut down its Roblox project just six months after its launch. Disney shut down its Metaworld division in March.
Whether the whole idea of the Metavsediverse was a complete scam created by the misguided Meta CEO to enrich his colleagues and himself, or whether he simply got ahead of what he thought was going to be a new era of the Internet, remains unclear. But herein lies the main problem. Since Zuckerberg was king and no one could stop him, no matter which of these options was true, he was still a victim of his own ego. In addition, the final touch was Facebook’s constant desire to control its users instead of listening to them.
The end game
End game
From a business perspective, Facebook is a giant, multibillion-dollar corporation that reached its ceiling a few years ago. The company is in serious turmoil and has nowhere to go with its current products.
Zuckerberg’s intention to reinvent himself and save his company by focusing solely on increasing profits-which we know is the top priority of most modern corporations-may have been the worst possible option.
Source: YouTube
Unfortunately, he will go unpunished. Even after he misled an entire industry, burned billions of dollars and got many to do the same with him.
The untouchable king, however, may be a victim of his own ego. And perhaps that will be the main reason for the decline and fall of his empire.
Read also: How to enter the meta universe and what it costs: A review
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