> Metaverse could be the next big thing and the long shot facebook needs.

I'm skeptical. With all their money and knowledge and whatnot, they've only managed to create something that looks like a dated console party game but not more. I don't see how that's the future.

Furthermore, do they expect everyone to buy a... say... $400 headset to use the Metaverse? The low entry barrier was probably one of the biggest reasons for the success of Facebook. If you need specialized equipment nobody will use it.

Couldn't agree more. The headset at $400 will be a high barrier to entry. If the metaverse was built on top of the smartphone then it would get most probably pernetrate the market faster.

have you ever heard of the concept of iterations? do you remember how the first mobile phone looked like? do you remember how the first computer looked like? first laptop ? first electric car ?

that's the point of R&D and long shot, if it was possible already it's not a long shot :/

It's 2022 and we have powerful 3D engines for computer games since years. No need for FB to reinvent the Wii look if ask me.

The headset is the reason why they are doing this in the first place. Nobody expected people to buy a $300 iPhone in 2007 or a $500 iPad in 2011, but when they did they gave Apple money-printing machine that can also bankrupt competitors.

Meta just needs a killer feature for the Metaverse. During the pandemic they bet hard on office-by-VR, but they moved too slowly missed the pandemic and many other deadlines before making a good product.

You're mixing things up.

Nobody bought an iPhone or iPad because of Facebook. You could also install the Facebook app on that, but you could also use your notebook or your desktop pc or your cheap Android phone or whatnot to use Facebook. Most people already had some "Facebook ready" device at home.

Nobody will buy an Oculus headset if its main/sole use is the Metaverse.

Sure, but almost nobody uses Facebook on their PCs anymore. Most Meta's users and revenues come from smartphones, which have an ecosystem controlled by Apple or Google.

Zuck is betting that more people will use VR in the future, and if you believe that hypothesis then it makes sense to invest infinite money in making sure your company becomes the Apple of VR instead of the Nokia.

How wisely that infinite VR money is being spent is another matter.

Oculus is the one to watch for Meta and it why they are betting on the AR glasses, not just only VR which everyone is missing. But it's not just Meta though, it is Google (thanks to North), Apple, Microsoft, etc all going for that.

We'll come back in a few years or decades time to see who will transform the glasses into another platform, just like the watch and the phone did.

Name one new product that Facebook built from scratch (did not acquire), launched, and made a sustained success of since their original social network.

The company cannot innovate and has bet the farm on their ability to innovate.

I’ve said it before: Facebook should monetise WhatsApp via payments (real payments, not crypto) and other services. That’s something within their capability and very much within their reach. Maybe they’re seeing that as a backup when VR fails, but the longer they leave it the bigger the risk someone else takes that market.

> Name one new product that Facebook built from scratch (did not acquire), launched, and made a sustained success of since their original social network.

Marketplace?

Yeah maybe I should have said “ideated and created from scratch” as directly cloning other products or features is something they’ve done a lot.

Yeah agreed on payments. I kept asking this question when I was there in 2013. They had payments licenses everywhere and just fluffed it completely in a quixotic attempt to put ads in messenger.

Like, from a margin perspective I get why they didn't want to do this, but it would have been a fantastic hedge against what happened with Apple and would probably have prevented Shopify from ever scaling.

So according to that logic the metaverse could succeed since it started from an acquisition (oculus), no?

hardware, to an extent - but not fully developed

software - nope, it's all new, they can't do it

The strategic mistake with the metaverse was the size of the investment, and going all in while appearing to ignore the rest of the business.