There’s no upper limit to their financial stupidity.
FaceBook largely requires an Apple iPhone, Apple computer, "Microsoft" computer, "Google" phone, or a "Google" computer to use it. At any point one of those companies could cut FaceBook off (ex. [1]).
The Metaverse was a long term goal to get people onto a device (Occulus) that Meta controlled. While I think an AR device is much more useful than VR; I'm not convinced that it's a mistake for Meta to peruse not being beholden to other platforms.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
The headsets don’t really make sense to me in the way you’re describing. Phones are omnipresent because it’s a thing you always just have on you. Headsets are large enough that it’s a conscious choice to bring it; they’re closer to a laptop than a phone.
Also, the web interface is like right there staring at them. Any device with a browser can access Facebook like that. Google/Apple/Microsoft can’t mess with that much without causing a huge scene and probably massive antitrust backlash.
It's kind of like Microsoft with copilot - the idea about having an AI assistant that can help you use the computer is great. But it can't be from Microsoft because people don't trust them with that.
I think VR has more niche uses than the craze implied. It’s got some cool games, virtual screens for a desktop could be cool someday, but I don’t see a near future where they replace phones.
They address the friction of use issue being discussed, they’re even more discrete and available than a phone. And they are getting a lot of general public recognition, albeit not for the best reasons (people discretely filming, for genuine social media reactions but also for other reasons..).
Their tech is improving at a decent pace and they’ve recently put out a product that is both ready for consumer (at least with select use cases) adoption, and actually reasonably available to the public.
Apple was directly (and IMO arguably illegally) shutting down Facebook teams and products by playing app store chicken on refusing to allow Facebook to publish updates on a week-to-week basis. Literally would throw down and refuse unless some features were blocked. It came to a head where Zuck literally called Tim Cook during a keynote to push it through.
They also literally had reverse-engineering teams cracking open the Facebook app on a regular basis, which we discovered because of some internal methods we figured out how to invoke with some clever indirection. There was a chicken-and-egg problem and they eventually developed facilities to automatically instrument private method invocations to comprehensively defeat clever static analysis circumvention workarounds.
Also, VR hasn't failed, but it's gone silent and coasted when investing in VR growth took the backseat to investing AI. They made a couple of bad bets in VR but a lot of good ones so it was warranted, but not exactly a failure.
But thinking AR/VR was the way to go is a failure to read the room. If anything the up and coming generations seem to be recoiling from tech.
Regardless, as Microsoft found, it's too late for a 3rd platform and it seems somehow that there's only room in the world for two.
(Meta would have done better to start up a line of caffeinated sugar drinks.)
Devoid of other context, it’s hard to disagree. But your parent comment only asserted that the metaverse specifically as proposed by Facebook was an obviously stupid idea.
Patrick Boyle did a nice video a few weeks back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BaSBjxNg-M
Some of those companies can cut off invasive apps.
There is no risk of facebook.com getting blocked. And absolutely nobody is going to prefer a headset over a website for doing facebook things.
If it's actual holograms like in Star Wars? Sure, why not. Get the visual and body language cues of the rest of the room but no one has to physically congregate at a location.
But pixelated, cartoon avatars? Yeah, wtf.
Maybe they should have spent that on the facebookphone
If it was really their goal, they would have made an Android competitor. Maybe a fork like amazon did and sell phones that supported it.
Zuckerberg had one great idea (and then it wasn't really his idea) at the right time, since then he failed over and over at everything else. 'Internet for all', remember ?
I really wouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe a niche product could do it, but good luck selling a laptop that won't open FB