Mark Zuckerberg has been facing mounting criticism over the company’s metaverse pivot. The sharpest of the criticism came from the Meta investors which forced the company to scale back and lay off over 11,000 employees in early November. However, last week, Zuckerberg revealed that the company is going full throttle with its metaverse course with up to 80% of the company’s workforce working on its legacy apps.

Zuckerberg speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit
Zuckerberg speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit  Image Cred: NYT

Zuckerberg believes that his investments in the metaverse will pay off over the long haul in spite of the nascent technological bottlenecks the company is grappling with at the moment in his bid to build what he believes will be the next computing frontier.

At the Deal Book Summit last week, Zuckerberg said that he wasn’t bothered by the skepticism coming from quarters regarding his metaverse ambitions: “the skepticism doesn’t bother me that much.”

Zuckerberg is expecting Meta’s huge metaverse investments to start paying off in five to ten years. He emphasized that how we communicate is becoming “richer and more immersive”, even with the current technologies, and this paves the path for the future mainstream adoption of the metaverse across the globe.

Most of the criticisms levied on Meta regarding its metaverse plans have mostly been about the high cost of the investment amidst the macroeconomic uncertainties and a slowdown in the company’s advertising business which is its main revenue source.

Meta’s fiercest critics aren’t necessarily against the decision to invest in the metaverse but at the cost of the investment in a technology that is not yet profitable. Meta invests more than $10 billion annually in the metaverse and revenues from its metaverse division is just about $2 billion. Meta’s investors appreciate the metaverse as representing the future of our interactions with one another but many are wary about throwing in billions of dollars in investments while the technology is still in its nascent stage.

Zuckerberg’s bid to rope in the majority of Meta’s investors into his grand metaverse dream was dealt a further blow by the global markets which dipped leading to the rise of interest rates and high inflations.

It is estimated that Meta has spent $36 billion on the metaverse so far and in that period of time, the company also hemorrhaged hundreds of billions of dollars in its market value.

In the past 12 months alone, Meta stock fell 60%. Following these woes, Zuckerberg is hitting the brakes and now appreciates the need for some responsibility in the company’s metaverse bets. Zuckerberg stated that Meta will need to start operating with “more efficiency and discipline” given the backdrop of the current macroeconomic situation.

Rob GrantMetaverseTechnologyMark Zuckerberg has been facing mounting criticism over the company’s metaverse pivot. The sharpest of the criticism came from the Meta investors which forced the company to scale back and lay off over 11,000 employees in early November. However, last week, Zuckerberg revealed that the company is going full...VR, Oculus Rift, and Metaverse News - Cryptocurrency, Adult, Sex, Porn, XXX