When Mark Zuckerberg announced the name change of Facebook’s parent company to Meta, it foreshadowed their future endeavor. Nearly a year later, Meta is all in on its vision of the metaverse. So much so that they reported a $2.8 billion loss in Q2 2022. The second consecutive quarterly loss for the division in the company.
The Meta metaverse
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that the company focuses on long-term earnings during its quarterly earnings report. The few billion lost could lead to “hundreds of billions, if not trillions in revenue over time,” said Zuckerberg. Meta plays the long game with Facebook Reality Labs, the company’s metaverse division. During the Q1 earnings report, Zuckerberg said that the company is “laying the groundwork for a very successful 2030s.”
“Zuckerberg and other Meta leaders believe that virtual and augmented reality headsets will be the major next-generation computing platform,” according to CNBC. These revenue losses are a symptom of the early development of the technology necessary to bring the Meta metaverse to fruition. The company expects to spend at least $10 billion on research and development of virtual and augmented reality tech.
Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Meta’s metaverse
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin weighed in on Meta’s approach to the metaverse in a series of tweets. “The ‘metaverse’ is going to happen but I don’t think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere,” Buterin tweeted.
Despite Meta’s heavy investment in VR and AR technology, he added that we know little about their vision for the Meta metaverse. Nor do we know what potential early adopters of the tech will want out of the experience. With that said, Buterin feels like whatever Meta comes up with is sure to “misfire.”
What do you think? Is Zuckerberg a visionary that will usher in the next era of online interconnectivity? Or is this just another potential cash grab doomed to fail? Let us know in the comments below.
