Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse

[Hydrogen]

Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse — and nobody's saying exactly where the money went

Facebook's cancelled cryptocurrency projects libra and diem were better than anything metaverse has to offer.

Meta hasn't shown much invention or innovation in its attempt to reinvent the internet. There isn't anything new they bring to the table.

Those who follow finance and business know exactly where the money went. The same precedent has been an ongoing theme for other large US corporations for years. The abrupt rebranding to metaverse without much marketing or promotion. The considerable redistribution of funds, despite lacking a good proof of concept or tech demo. The buggy lo fi rollout. Everything about it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Even without knowing the past history of financial engineering and massive debt restructuring occurring in brand name american corporations.

[hatshepsut93]

Let that company and all its projects die, and the quicker the better.  Facebook/Meta is just one Big Brother out of several that needs to be blown out of the water.

I doubt that this failure alone could become Facebook's undoing, but it could be a step towards it. Facebook is still too big to fail, but if it continues to be mismanaged and competition would provide better alternatives to online socializing, it could decline significantly in 10-15 years.

I know it's been a long time since Zuckerberg "created" Facebook, but maybe he's let things go to his head and thinks he can create demand for something like that.  But whatever the case may be, it sounds like Meta investors aren't happy with the black hole those billions of dollars are going into.  I mean Jesus, that's a lot of money for any company to be spending on R&D, and if it's not clear to shareholders exactly what the money is being spent on....there's a big investor-relations problem there.

Maybe 15 billion is not a massive sum for a company like Meta, but the fact that it's spent on overly-ambitious project with low chance of success and in an untransparent way, that's certainly a bad sign for investors.

[Silberman]

Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse — and nobody's saying exactly where the money went

Meta has spent more than $15 billion on its Reality Labs metaverse venture since the beginning of last year, but so far, the company hasn't shared on what, precisely, money is being spent.

Some experts are getting worried the company is spending good money after bad.

"The problem is that they spend the money, but the transparency with investors has been a disaster," Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, said.

"This continues to be a risky bet by Zuckerberg and the team because, for now, they're betting money on the future while they continue to have massive headwinds on their core business," he added.

I always thought that Metaverse is a stupid idea, it can only succeed when VR is massively popular, which it is not right now. Zuck is trying to put a cart before the horse.

I think the reason Zuckerberg is so adamant on building the metaverse as soon as possible is because most likely he wants to monopolize not only the software but the hardware aspect as well, right now everyone can use his platforms on any smartphone as those devices are widely available all over the world, but if he can create a metaverse ahead of everyone while VR devices are not as popular he could create his own VR equipment monopolizing that market as well, we will have to see if I am right but at least that is what I believe he is thinking.

[Darker45]

It seems to me Zuckerberg has this mentality that he could build something even grander after building Facebook. Facebook was indeed a huge success but it can't happen all the time, and nobody could simply build one huge success after another. To a certain extent, success as big as Facebook in the field of technology is unpredictable. It just happens.

This man is ambitious. It's not necessarily bad, of course, but it could cost you a lot and the risk is high. I remembered how amazing a vision Libra was. And he, in fact, already managed to bring the largest companies in the world together to create the Libra Association. But then, for some reasons, it didn't materialize. He, then, went on to attempt to create another grand stablecoin project that also didn't make it.

And now his grand metaverse vision has already cost him a lot but it remains less promising until now. It's becoming more and more likely that it would share the same fate with Libra and Diem. This doesn't look good for the publicly-listed company.

[mindrust]

I always thought that Metaverse is a stupid idea, it can only succeed when VR is massively popular, which it is not right now. Zuck is trying to put a cart before the horse.

That's called "timing the markets"

Like you said VR might get popular in the future even though I don't see that happening but the time is definitely not now.

The thing is Zuck ran out of creativity. He bought Instagram and Whatsapp and these were his last good moves with FB. Actually it is whatsapp and instagram keeping the whole thing alive. FB itself is a damn cemetery. Yes some people use it but it is far from its former glory especially now they are censoring and banning people left and right just because they used some curse words. Wtf is this place? Even your local high school has more freedom than facebook.

[Mauser]

I always thought that Metaverse is a stupid idea, it can only succeed when VR is massively popular, which it is not right now. Zuck is trying to put a cart before the horse.

I thought so myself, this metaverse project makes no sense at all. Why would anybody use it in the first place? Even if everybody had a VR setup at home, would you really be using the Zuckerberg metaverse or a different company? I am pretty sure there is no way he is going to turn the project around. So much money invested in that project and nothing to show for, the graphics are bad and there are no active users. At this point it would make sense to abandon the project and write it off, maybe get some tax benefits for failed developments. It's one thing to not have enough VR setups with customers, another thing is the brand name of Zuckerberg. I don't think there will be another success company like Facebook it its good days now from Zuckerberg. Many customers are very sceptical when it comes to another social media experience from Zuckerberg.

[Tony116]

This meta project has been met with a lot of ridicule because of some leaked images that appeared on social media but it is not enough to say that their attempt will fail. It's a billion dollar project and Zuckerberg has succeeded with Facebook so I think he will have his plans and ambitions. He's trying to create a technology for the future, if it's successful and popular, I believe people will use it so I won't pray for him to fail like everyone else, I'm simply is to monitor its development.

[SaveOurSea]

This meta project has been met with a lot of ridicule because of some leaked images that appeared on social media but it is not enough to say that their attempt will fail. It's a billion dollar project and Zuckerberg has succeeded with Facebook so I think he will have his plans and ambitions. He's trying to create a technology for the future, if it's successful and popular, I believe people will use it so I won't pray for him to fail like everyone else, I'm simply is to monitor its development.

Apart from having some leaked images we shouldn't just scoff at it,
I think Mark Zuckerberg didn't play around in making the project considering that it also requires a lot of capital,
that's right it's better to follow and monitor the progress of the Meta project

[blue_hurricanger]

$15 billion seems like a lot but Facebook/Meta has a huge source of income to burn. It was from the social media ads on Facebook for publishers. Cause of that, they are willing to push their Metaverse bullcrap, sinking more money into it without any split second to doubt think.
What, do you expect them to stop after investing $15 billion? We'll see more of Metaverse one way or another from Facebook.

[Taskford]

$15 billion seems like a lot but Facebook/Meta has a huge source of income to burn. It was from the social media ads on Facebook for publishers. Cause of that, they are willing to push their Metaverse bullcrap, sinking more money into it without any split second to doubt think.
What, do you expect them to stop after investing $15 billion? We'll see more of Metaverse one way or another from Facebook.

They can cover up all those loses since Facebook still the top social media platform which generate then a billions of dollars. And that amount is I think they can afford to lose since this is part of their investment which if they succeed then they are the first who can do it then it will surely give them a thousand folds return of profits.

[davis196]

The concept of Metaverse is way ahead of it's time. The current level of technology can't handle the idea of a complex and fully functional Metaverse. Perhaps after 10 or 15 years we might witness the vast adoption of the Metaverse. I don't know what would be the main utility of this project. How the metaverse could make our lives better? By escaping from reality?
I'm not a fan of the whole idea of virtual reality and metaverse, but I can't stop the innovation. The human technological progress can be heading towards weird directions. The future is going to suck for sure.
Billionaires like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk seem disconnected from the actual problems of the human kind in the real world.

[so98nn]

Thats a crazy bet played by Mark and he could get into lawsuite trouble one more time after facebook. Why is that he is always being such jack when things are always in right direction for him? He is whole and sole target of many peeps when it comes to something bad in association with his project or facebook itself. He has lot of money but he always kinda overspend on stupid things or improper managements. I know he must be having big team behind his decisions with white collars but man, results ain't proving anything right here?

Metaverse, though futuristic many companies are already into it and bringing up some realities to it. They are doing this from the scratch but this guy with pocket full of money and 15 billions bucks on single project? He could have made whole star trek mission in metaverse with that much money.

[Paul Pogba]

Interesting to follow developments after being burned $ 15 billion, of course the team already has a deep calculation so that it dares to be burned $ 15 billion, and if it can be successful of course there will be many developers who will imitate techniques like this.

[kryptqnick]

I am not sympathetic with rich guys who are shareholders of Meta and that the company is doing something shady with the money without really providing many results. But I am happy that Metaverse thing isn't working out so far. Companies like this, tech giants, already know too much about us and have too much control. They shouldn't have more unless we're moving to a dystopian future. Instead of burning the money on trying to get even more private data to sell to companies to make people waste more money, though, these billions could've been spent on some charity, social, medical, educational initiative, so that is a shame.

[livingfree]

I have read and somewhat followed that progress. But it seems that even they've got a huge budget for the project, they're quite late on it during the hype.

Everything has been down and it's not a good time to launch it. There's something wrong to those people behind working with their Metaverse project but that's not probably a thing to them because they're looking at it as a long term project and feature.

With that kind of funds, they can easily create hype and beside, they didn't launch any yet and maybe they also understand that the market situation right now it not a good timing to introduce such project.

That Billions of funds will not be put in waste, I'm sure META is prepared for this and they already anticipate the government intervention once they launch this project. Maybe they still need more time before they disclose any information with regards to this one.

They can create hype and attention to it. But this proves that they can't go against the bear market because their project didn't do well at this time.

And they've started first with other projects that have made them spend money already, AFAIK that's a million dollar budget but they've changed their goal and abandoned it.

[blue_hurricanger]

$15 billion seems like a lot but Facebook/Meta has a huge source of income to burn. It was from the social media ads on Facebook for publishers. Cause of that, they are willing to push their Metaverse bullcrap, sinking more money into it without any split second to doubt think.
What, do you expect them to stop after investing $15 billion? We'll see more of Metaverse one way or another from Facebook.

They can cover up all those loses since Facebook still the top social media platform which generate then a billions of dollars. And that amount is I think they can afford to lose since this is part of their investment which [/b]if they succeed then they are the first who can do it then it will surely give them a thousand folds return of profits.[/b]

If you mean a decent profit to stand on its own feet then yes. But a thousand folds return of profits from the initial investment in Metaverse? Big doubt.
The thing about Metaverse is how ridiculous it was for advertising publishers to pay a fee to rent a space in the cyberland. But to do that, that cyberland needs a lot of traffics from people's avatar, in turn, a massive amount of users on Metaverse. See the problem here? Facebook's Metaverse has none of that right now. More money is being put in, with zero profit return for at least a few years unless they have more users jump in their Metaverse craps.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Facebook's cancelled cryptocurrency projects libra and diem were better than anything metaverse has to offer.

I remember Libra, but for some reason diem is only ringing a low-volume bell in my head.  Anyway, if you're comparing those two against whatever their Metaverse turns out to be, I'm not so sure the cryptos were better ideas or not.  Maybe for Facebook, but not for the general public--but I guess we'll never know since the US government wouldn't let them get off the ground.

Those who follow finance and business know exactly where the money went. The same precedent has been an ongoing theme for other large US corporations for years.

Am I reading between the lines correctly here?  Are you saying Meta might be pulling an Enron or something illegal of that nature, like accounting fraud, quarter-stuffing, and all that crap that corporations do to make their stock look attractive to big investors and/or line the pockets of the corporations' executives' pockets?

I honestly hadn't thought of that, since Meta/Facebook hasn't shown any evidence of doing that in the past (or at least I haven't picked up on it).  Then again, a lot of financial chicanery doesn't get detected until the house of cards comes tumbling down--just like in Enron's case.  Don't know if you're right or wrong here, but it'll be interesting to see what comes of all this money Meta is throwing into the black hole.

[avikz]

I always thought that Metaverse is a stupid idea, it can only succeed when VR is massively popular, which it is not right now. Zuck is trying to put a cart before the horse.

I belong to the same league. Metaverse and NFT - both are stupid ideas! In this era of scientific advancements, keeping people busy into an non-existent world, can bring disaster. Meta is seeing that looking at their sliding stock price.

Elon was so right about this. He said it is a marketing buzzword to create curiosity. But once the curiosity is satisfied, people will not head back to such world because it's not a value proposition to them.

Entire concept of a metaverse, is going to fail Miserably.

[Renampun]

Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse — and nobody's saying exactly where the money went

Meta has spent more than $15 billion on its Reality Labs metaverse venture since the beginning of last year, but so far, the company hasn't shared on what, precisely, money is being spent.

Some experts are getting worried the company is spending good money after bad.

"The problem is that they spend the money, but the transparency with investors has been a disaster," Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, said.

"This continues to be a risky bet by Zuckerberg and the team because, for now, they're betting money on the future while they continue to have massive headwinds on their core business," he added.

I always thought that Metaverse is a stupid idea, it can only succeed when VR is massively popular, which it is not right now. Zuck is trying to put a cart before the horse.

Meta is pouring money into its metaverse efforts, spending $10 billion in 2021 on the project alone, up from $6.6 billion in 2020, and $4.5 billion in 2019. What’s more, Zuckerberg expects to continue plowing cash into the business over the next three to five years.

I quite applaud Zuck's belief in the future of metaverse technology, he targets that in the next 15 years his project will be successful and META becomes a leader in metaverse technology, even though it looks very ambitious but he is making bets and he says he is ready with all possibilities that happen in the future.

[SirLancelot]

It seems to me Zuckerberg has this mentality that he could build something even grander after building Facebook. Facebook was indeed a huge success but it can't happen all the time, and nobody could simply build one huge success after another. To a certain extent, success as big as Facebook in the field of technology is unpredictable. It just happens.

This man is ambitious. It's not necessarily bad, of course, but it could cost you a lot and the risk is high. I remembered how amazing a vision Libra was. And he, in fact, already managed to bring the largest companies in the world together to create the Libra Association. But then, for some reasons, it didn't materialize. He, then, went on to attempt to create another grand stablecoin project that also didn't make it.

And now his grand metaverse vision has already cost him a lot but it remains less promising until now. It's becoming more and more likely that it would share the same fate with Libra and Diem. This doesn't look good for the publicly-listed company.

This is the mentality of a successful people. They won't just stop after they create a working product but they will always try their best to improve it more because they know that once they stop, other competitors can beat them. This is a great mentality imo but I think there are people who will hate him for this.

They will say that mark z is only wasting his money and effort for this and the metaverse project that he is trying to create is still not good enough. They can also link this to other failed projects that they built on the past like libra coin but who knows, this one might be a success? He is only showing that failure must not stop us for trying again.