Source: Giktime / Stable Diffusion | פרומפט: Mark Zuckerberg in renaissance painting, hyperrealistic, detailed, dramatic, elegant
By: Yuval Hochberg
“The future is in the Metaverse” Zuckerberg announced in September 2021. A year after the announcement, it seems we are still stuck in the present. Meta announced the layoffs of thousands of employees, the stock is collapsing, investor confidence is disappearing and the question on everyone’s mind is: Is Metaverse really the future? Or is it possible that Mark Zuckerberg bet everything on a failed idea that would cost him the company?
Successes in the business world happen when several factors come together – buyers, timing and technology. If you have the coolest technology in the world, but no one will buy it – you will fail. If you have buyers, you have technology, but there is a global epidemic – you will probably fail. If you have built the technology, entered the market at the right time and have the audience to buy your product – maybe you are the next Mark Zuckerberg.
So let’s analyze our case – in terms of technology, it exists but is not yet advanced enough. The quality of virtual reality is still in development, the ability to feel that you are really there is still far from being achieved and many other problems that Facebook claims to solve but have not yet done so. As far as the audience is concerned, the virtual world is still in its infancy in all respects. Although there are buyers who will jump at the opportunity to dive into the virtual world that Meta offers, but without a sweeping adoption of the entire population, this world will remain desolate. If we add to that the heavy price tag that a user has to pay to have the equipment to take part in this world, the audience that is willing to buy the idea that meta is selling, is not large enough.
So what about timing? The corona caused us all to feel disconnected and the announcement of the metaverse came at the height of the corona – supposedly excellent timing, but with the reopening of the world, the majority of the population prefers personal interaction to network interaction due to the shortage of the last two years. Add to that the global economic situation and the war in Ukraine, and the result is very bad timing for such a change. If Meta had announced the transition to Metaverse and at the same time launched a technology accessible to the entire population at the peak of the Corona virus, we might be in a different place today.
Another and very important point is that the name of Facebook and Meta has a negative connotation among the majority of the world’s population. Scandals surrounding privacy and the sale of information, intrigues and stories about poor conduct within Facebook created a very bad image – one of the main reasons that led to the new branding of Facebook as meta. Mark Zuckerberg is holding on with the rest of his forces at the top and the unprecedented focus of all the company’s resources towards Metaverse shows that this is a move where he is putting everything on the line knowing that if it doesn’t work out, it might be the end.
Investors are losing faith because Zuckerberg is clinging to an idea that no one has yet figured out what he is. The metaverse remains under the title of “buzz word” and the utopian world we all imagine remains a dream in movies such as “Ready Player One”. Will we see a transition of the entire population to layered reality and virtual reality? very possible. But the question that really needs to be asked is will Meta survive until then?
Mark was right about the idea, he found buyers, he was right about the technology but he got the timing big wrong. Virtual worlds are promised every other day but get stuck on promises, and the world is simply too busy with wars and inflation to make such a radical change as adopting the metaverse as the dominant reality. In ten years we may see a global adoption of the Metaverse, but until then Meta will have to make a new pivot, otherwise it will fall from the top of the pyramid like the greats before it (Nokia as an example). Meta has set the direction but will remain out of realization and now it remains to be seen who will be the genius with the perfect timing to take us to the promised virtual future.
The writer is a product manager at Bap Technologies