Isn't every terrible business decision a gamble that "could have paid off" if one thing or another happened?

Being wrongly infatuated with a concept as Meta seems with metaverse is not a gamble IMHO.

It seem more like a stupid decision done by someone that became successful by being in the right place at the right time. And now they want to prove that it wasn't an accident and that they have it takes to repeat hence become infatuated with an absurd idea that we want to be inside the FB world.

> It seem more like a stupid decision done by someone that became successful by being in the right place at the right time

This is massively underselling what led to Facebook's success. As someone who started using Facebook-alternatives in 2001, there were a ton of competing social networks at the time. Many very superficially similar to Facebook, and many with a multi-year headstart. FB drove them all to extinction and became the social network via a combination of great product management, and engineering execution. And this was all led by a teenager in his second year of college. The vast majority of people in his shoes would not have achieved the outcome that he did.

I think a combination of the tight control over design/aesthetic (no customization) and the exclusivity was extremely alluring and created the first wave of adoption that just cascaded. I think timing really was a massive deal at that point. Clubhouse attempted to do this recently, and had the same massive wave of initial success, but struggles to maintain that growth because the product itself isn't very interesting.

I think the point is that it is too soon to say the bet hasn't paid off, maybe it pays off many years from now.

It can be both an admirable bet and the failure the OP describes. In fact I think the fact that it's a big hairy audacious risky shot is why OP may prove correct and it's discussed in MBA programs for the next 100 years.

> big hairy audacious risky shot

Is it though? He'll be a billionaire the rest of his life. His grandchildren will be billionaires. What's the risk? Other then his employees jobs. The dozens of vendors that serve Facebook and their employees. The local businesses that depend on Facebook.

Why is greed so often mistaken for nobility?

I think it's important to note too that he can only really make this big, audacious bet because he is the controlling shareholder. Most other big companies wouldn't be able to get a consensus to agree to something this big a gamble.