{"id":92122,"date":"2024-10-30T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=92122"},"modified":"2024-10-29T11:08:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T15:08:04","slug":"zuckerbergs-bad-bet-on-virtual-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/10\/30\/zuckerbergs-bad-bet-on-virtual-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Zuckerberg&#8217;s bad bet on Virtual Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.honest-broker.com\/p\/how-virtual-reality-died\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ted Gioia<\/a> notes the anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s worst financial decision &mdash; the plunge into virtual reality:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Zuckerbergs-Meta-VR-investment.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Zuckerbergs-Meta-VR-investment-480x410.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"410\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-92123\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Zuckerbergs-Meta-VR-investment-480x410.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Zuckerbergs-Meta-VR-investment-150x128.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Zuckerbergs-Meta-VR-investment.jpg 585w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A big birthday happens tomorrow. But don&#8217;t expect a celebration.<\/p>\n<p>There will be no party, no disco. There will be no cake, no clown, no bouncy house for the kids. No Marilyn Monroe cooing the birthday song.<\/p>\n<p>Just dead silence. But make no mistake \u2014 this is a <em>very expensive<\/em> birthday.<\/p>\n<p>Exactly three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg placed a huge bet on virtual reality. On October 28, 2021, he even <a href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2021\/10\/facebook-company-is-now-meta\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">changed the name of his company<\/a> \u2014 from Facebook to Meta.<\/p>\n<p>A new company was born. But that&#8217;s now a huge embarrassment.<\/p>\n<p>The name Meta is a lasting reminder of the most foolish decision Zuck ever made \u2014 even worse than <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocialnetwork.fandom.com\/wiki\/Facemash\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facemash<\/a> or those <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/intj\/comments\/42rrh9\/mark_zuckerbergs_wardrobe_screams_intj\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ugly T-shirts<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, that&#8217;s not how he saw things three years ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Meta&#8217;s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life,&#8221; the company announced. &#8220;In the metaverse,&#8221; Zuckerberg bragged, &#8220;you&#8217;ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There was a catch \u2014 the tech billionaire needed to convince millions of people to wear virtual reality headsets.<\/p>\n<p>But they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2021\/07\/26\/facebook-creates-exec-team-to-work-on-metaverse.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">looked ridiculous<\/a> \u2014 you literally had to wear blinders if you wanted to enter Mr. Zucker&#8217;s neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.honest-broker.com\/p\/meta-is-for-losers\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">very next day<\/a>, I declared that &#8220;Meta is for losers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This will never be cool.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-11-01-57-How-Virtual-Reality-Died-by-Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-11-01-57-How-Virtual-Reality-Died-by-Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"661\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-92124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-11-01-57-How-Virtual-Reality-Died-by-Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker.png 728w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-11-01-57-How-Virtual-Reality-Died-by-Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-480x436.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-11-01-57-How-Virtual-Reality-Died-by-Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-705x640.png 705w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-11-01-57-How-Virtual-Reality-Died-by-Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-150x136.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 728px) 100vw, 728px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg was &#8220;making the wrong bet&#8221;, I warned \u2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.honest-broker.com\/p\/meta-is-for-losers\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">gave my reasons<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The interface looks goofy and cartoonish. Instead of entering the gritty, exciting world of <strong>Blade Runner<\/strong>, you\u2019re trapped inside a bad episode of <strong>Family Guy<\/strong> &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And users will look creepy too. You need to lock yourself into a headset to get the full benefit of the metaverse \u2014 and there\u2019s no way that Zuckerberg can make that look cool. The people who spend hour after hour in his metaverse will be the subject of jokes and mockery &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>They will be nerds and incels and the most disgruntled members of society, each desperate for escape.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mark Zuckerberg eventually figured this out. But the company lost more than $20 billion over the next two years in a desperate attempt to convince normal people to abandon reality and enter his fake world.<\/p>\n<p>Even as consumers resisted, Meta refused to admit it had made such a colossal mistake. Just last year, Zuckerberg still denied that he was abandoning virtual reality.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A narrative has developed that we&#8217;re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse,&#8221; he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-66913551\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told shareholders<\/a>. &#8220;So I just want to say upfront that that&#8217;s not accurate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then he did exactly that \u2014 retreating from the metaverse he had spent so much money building.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/07\/19\/mark-zuckerberg-meta-reality-labs-spending-cuts\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Fortune<\/em> warned<\/a> three months ago that Mr. Z&#8217;s metaverse &#8220;may finally be running out of cash&#8221;. Then in August, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/technology\/meta-cancels-plans-high-end-mixed-reality-headset-information-reports-2024-08-23\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta cancelled the development<\/a> of a next generation VR headset. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ted Gioia notes the anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s worst financial decision &mdash; the plunge into virtual reality: A big birthday happens tomorrow. But don&#8217;t expect a celebration. There will be no party, no disco. There will be no cake, no clown, no bouncy house for the kids. No Marilyn Monroe cooing the birthday song. Just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[391,156,571],"class_list":["post-92122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-facebook","tag-fail","tag-investment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nXQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92125,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92122\/revisions\/92125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}