Tech

Meta’s gamble on the metaverse seems to have gotten off to a bad start.

The years do not spare anyone, and times do not stop changing. The former queen of social networks, Facebookhas just reported that after its relentless growth for almost two decades, and for the first time in its history, it has just started losing users globally. A news that, beyond the great surprise, seems to have caused some panic among some investors, causing a sharp drop in the value of their shares, which fell by about 20% during this week.

The massive drop in shares instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook’s corporate rebranding to Meta isn’t enough to distract investors from problems in its core social media business. And it is that the growth of users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp not only seems to have been somewhat stagnant during the last quarter, but the main application, Facebook, has experienced the loss of 1 million daily users only in North America .

Although this fall has not been an isolated event, but rather it is part of a general decrease in daily Facebook users around the world, an event that, according to a company spokesperson, had never occurred in history. of the company.

That said, while one million daily users seems like a high figure, it should be noted that the drop leaves the social network with 1,929 million daily users. However, it continues to reflect a clear trend that confirms the growing lack of relevance of Facebook among the younger audience, and the little interest that the brand has generated after its change of orientation to the metaverse, a field still to be developed.

Facebook VR Oculus Quest 120Hz

However, it should be noted that Meta continues to be a stable and profitable company, having accumulated profits of almost 40,000 million dollars last year alone, mainly from advertising. Even if not even Zuckerberg’s new metaverse orientation seems to be going in the right direction.

And it is that currently the giant of social networks also is losing billions through Reality Labs, the division responsible for the Quest VR headset, VR software, upcoming AR glasses, and other initiatives related to the metaverse. Specifically, these losses amounted to $10.2 billion against revenue of $2.3 billion, a statistic that includes Quest sales and its share of VR app purchases.

Thus, broadly speaking, we can make it clear that Meta is not having the best startwith an expense still pending to increase to finish consolidating its strong commitment to the metaverse; Facebook is in declinealong with the rest of the group’s social networks that not only seem to be somewhat neglected by users, but also by the company, being the most affected by the payment of these new investments; the future of Meta is still somewhat uncertainwith a strong commitment to the metaverse that, although it aims to become one of the great elements of the next generation, still needs a lot of development at a general, technical and social level.

Some premises that have caused some ex-workers have signaled an inevitable end to Meta in the future. And you, do you think Meta is on the right track? Does the social future lie with the metaverse?

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