Metaverse – Mark Zuckerberg’s billion-dollar gamble ‘everything goes, no one’: Burning money in 10 years is not sure to make a profit, the risk of becoming an ‘antique’ before TikTok

According to Yahoo Finance, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is constantly experiencing bad news. After reporting unfavorable results last week, shares of the world’s largest social network have headed lower. Meta’s total market capitalization fell below $600 billion in the last session on February 8, much lower than the level of $ 1 trillion in June 2021.

Many experts believe that Meta (Facebook) currently has 3 main problems to solve. The first is that they are losing users to the competition of other social networks like Tiktok. Next, Apple’s revision of its privacy policy makes it difficult for Facebook to profit from advertising. Finally, the Metaverse problem that Mark Zuckerberg is investing all his time in to find a way out for the company does not seem to have shown any signs of improvement.

Being stuck in old problems and not finding a way out of the future is common in technology companies when they try to develop a new product from the old aura. Facebook has spent more than 20 billion USD investing in virtual universe in 2020-2021 and has not yet achieved the expected success.

Historically, consumers have also been momentarily excited about virtual reality (VR) headsets, only to now have them become an abandoned product.

So will Metaverse become a second VR of Facebook when the company also had a big presentation about virtual reality glasses and then they became a product no one cares anymore?

Gamble all the way

The virtual universe is Facebook’s hope to create a digital environment where users can interact with everything from communicating to performing other virtual social activities. However, this technology is still too new and there are not many services. Currently, only a few online games are using this technology.

Forrester’s survey in August 2021 found that only 17% of Britons and 23% of Americans were interested in virtual space technology. The rest either don’t care or don’t understand what it is.

Despite that, Facebook is still ambitious when spending a lot of money to build a digital space for the virtual universe. Even according to Yahoo Finance, it seems that Meta is putting all their hopes for the future of development on the virtual universe.

Currently, Facebook has sold the Quest2 virtual reality headset with apps like “Beat Saber” or “Meta’s Horizon Worlds”. Founder Mark Zuckerberg also said users have spent more than $ 1 billion buying content for their Oculus virtual reality glasses. However, the actual number is not made public.

Meta . Quest 2 virtual reality set

Clearly, Facebook is putting all its efforts into developing a virtual universe that extends beyond just selling virtual reality devices and apps. This is also the reason for Facebook to change the name of the parent company to Meta in October 2021.

“Obviously with the change of name to Meta, Facebook has shown that they are going to put all their energy into the virtual universe. They are betting that this new technology will be the future for social networks and people when it comes to online interactions. So, Mark Zuckerberg took the gamble,” said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester.

Not only Facebook, companies like Animoxa (the parent company of Sandbox application) believe that the virtual universe will help promote the digital shopping market to decorate their virtual characters, creating a virtual currency business environment. along with many other services.

Meanwhile, crypto investment firm Grayscale estimates virtual universe revenue could reach up to $1 trillion thanks to advertising programs, equipment sales or virtual events.

Billion USD game

In addition to the story that has not attracted users and customers still do not understand new technology, Mark Zuckerberg also has an extremely difficult problem, which is money. Many experts believe that in order to build new technology to earn profits as Meta wants, it will have to invest billions of dollars in investment.

In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, Mark Zuckerberg spent up to $3.3 billion on research into the virtual universe. This figure is still nothing compared to the more than $ 20 billion that Facebook spent in 2020-2021 on this new technology.

According to the most optimistic predictions, the bright prospect that Mark Zuckerberg outlined will take at least 10 years to achieve and the number that Facebook will have to spend is many billions of dollars more. But whether Facebook will survive there to continue pumping money for Mark’s dream is still in question.

“Mark Zuckerberg is having trouble finding a growth direction for the company and the dream of a virtual universe to bring money to Facebook is still too far away,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Even the Facebook founder himself admits it takes time for Meta’s new project to turn a profit.

“The new vision is still too far and although the direction is clear, the concrete path has not yet been determined,” admitted Mark.

Despite that, Mark Zuckerberg is still forced to gamble in the virtual universe because otherwise, they will become “antiques” like MySpace before the threat of new social networks like Tiktok.