It won't! That's the most galling aspect of this gigantic waste of money. That you're calling it a "new market" is precisely the problem --- when you've sunk this many billions into something, you can't wait that long before needing to make that money back.

The "metaverse" is ironically set up to be Facebook's walled garden. It has no other use, it cannot be repurposed or made modular in any way. It's not a standalone product that say, integrates with Google Ads, something that they could try to offload to some other company.

It's Zuck's baby, and in the middle of slow and protracted crib death.

>when you've sunk this many billions into something, you can't wait that long before needing to make that money back.

The last 15 years of tech says otherwise. Tesla is the most obvious counterpoint to this example. I don't think the Metaverse is useful, but my issue with Facebook isn't that he poured 30B into what was essentially R&D.

Tesla is an automotive company whose finances and stock valuation work on very different principles compared to an ad company like Facebook.

if it were actually valued as an automotive company, it wouldn't have anywhere close to its current valuation

Or Amazon.

The metaverse is their shot at the next OS (or platform, but that's too vague). He who controls the OS controls everything (Apple for their specific desktops, Microsoft for every other desktop and laptop, Apple and Google for mobile, Google for the web - yes, the web is for all intents and purposes another platform/OS).

Facebook has their own platform but it's built on top of others so it can be choked off. Facebook wants its own OS.