Eric Darnley SmallSince 2021, Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot to the metaverse, promising a “successor to the mobile internet,” has turned into a costly flop. Meta’s Reality Labs has lost over $70 billion, with only about 38 users as of 2022, due to unengaging virtual environments, expensive headsets, and limited content. The hype of a trillion-dollar opportunity and global ambitions like Barbados’s metaverse embassy have proved overly optimistic. Now, Zuckerberg plans to cut Reality Labs’ budget by up to 30%, potentially losing $4-$6 billion and cutting jobs—showing that the metaverse’s promise remains unfulfilled and perhaps unattainable for the masses. Will this setback dampen the vision of a virtual future? More here: https://fortune.com/2025/12/05/mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-layoffs-cuts-facebook-rebrand #Metaverse #Meta #VR #TechInvestments #Innovation #TechFail #FutureTech
haagch@ericdsmall I still don't understand how newspapers expect to sell subscriptions when they let authors publish articles who not only have clearly no idea what they are talking about, but also don't even have the common sense to question clearly bogus assertions like "Meta’s Reality Labs division has [...] a user base of approximately 38 people as of 2022."
Even for journalists who don't actually want to do real work, chatgpt will point them immediately to https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-does-zuckerbergs-12bn-metaverse-only-have-38-users-1751905
