Facebook Is Spending At Least $10 Billion This Year On Its Metaverse Division (theverge.com) 58
Last week, Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union to help build "the metaverse," a futuristic notion for connecting online that uses augmented and virtual reality. We now know how much the company plans to spend on this venture, as revealed in the company's third-quarter earnings release. According to The Verge, "Facebook plans to spend at least $10 billion this year on Facebook Reality Labs, its metaverse division tasked with creating AR and VR hardware, software, and content." From the report: "We are committed to bringing this long-term vision to life and we expect to increase our investments for the next several years," the company writes in its third-quarter earnings release this afternoon. Facebook sees AR and VR as being core to "the next generation of online social experiences." The division, which already makes the Oculus Quest headset and Portal lineup of calling devices, is clearly being positioned as the next big thing inside of Facebook. For one, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about the metaverse nonstop for the past several months. And today, Facebook said it's going to begin reporting earnings specifically for its Reality Labs segment, while Facebook's main ads business -- a staggering $28 billion this last quarter alone -- will be reported under another bucket. It's a sign to investors that the Reality Labs business matters and should be judged separately from how they value Facebook today.
It's also a move to, perhaps, distract from what else is going on in Facebook's earnings today. The company missed revenue expectations by around $1 billion (this is not a lot, exactly, at Facebook's scale), which speaks to some of the company's struggles right now. Facebook blames a number of factors for this: COVID-19, the economy, and Apple's recent ad-tracking changes -- something we saw last week when Snap reported earnings, too.
It's also a move to, perhaps, distract from what else is going on in Facebook's earnings today. The company missed revenue expectations by around $1 billion (this is not a lot, exactly, at Facebook's scale), which speaks to some of the company's struggles right now. Facebook blames a number of factors for this: COVID-19, the economy, and Apple's recent ad-tracking changes -- something we saw last week when Snap reported earnings, too.
Second Second Life (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Second Second Life (Score:3)
Re: Second Second Life (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep mulling it over and conclude that if there are no virtual genitals in the metaverse it's doomed to fail. YouTube works because there is pornhub. The metaverse needs an addon. Subscription based, with a hardware (wetware) component paid off over 2 to 4 years with hire-purchase. Sex doesn't just sell, it's the reason we're here. And also the reason we're here FOR. Sex has always been everywhere, I'm talking advertising. But now it can be monopolised. Just like advertising. Fecebook rakes in $25bn PER QUARTER in advertising revenue. The metaverse, with hardware addons, erm plugins, will reap 10 times this. You can imagine the slogan: If it ain't a Zuck, you can't fuck.
Re: Second Second Life (Score:5, Informative)
Metaverse is just Facebook thrashing around desperately for the next big thing, as its core service declines with an aging user base and tainted by endless scandals. To many people Facebook is the place their crazy aunt goes to get her Q conspiracy theories.
Re: Second Second Life (Score:2)
thrashing around aka sex. It matters less what people think of Fecebook and more what they use it for, thereby bringing in the eyeballs and ad dollars. All the Karens are there, and your nanas and nonas. But so is the soccer club, the new baby photo and the breaking local news. It's entrenched and needs regulation.
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consider.
for 10 billion dollars.
one can build a self sustaining moon base to make money from all the karens on earth
Facebook's metaverse will be awful (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm thinking Facebook's metaverse will be a kind of weird mix of the black mirror episodes "Fifteen Million Merits" and "USS Callister", minus the available booze.
They'll scan your eye movements to see what you look at, then bombard you with ads that you can't block unless you pay to skip them. And they're prude as fuck, so I guess booze and lewd things are out of the question.
Re: Facebook's metaverse will be awful (Score:3)
Maybe they are launching in the EU so that it doesn't have to be pride as fuck. Food for thought, the EU seems often more open to titties and beer.
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" Food for thought, the EU seems often more open to titties and beer."
In Munich you can see titties and clams and drink beer in open liter glasses in the public park.
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If only I planned my life better I would be living in Germany.
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FB can make "a" metaverse, but they can't make "the" metaverse - exactly as you say, they're too prudy, too corporate, and too tied to other influences. FB will want to run it all themselves - which will be the reason it'll fail.
The end game will be an open metaverse - sort of like when the web first started, we all had "www" in our URLs so people know there was a website there. For a time, we'll have to have "mv.example.com" or whatever for the metaverse experience. On arrival, you'll be able to step from
How Many Homeless Can 10 Billion Help? (Score:2)
Fuck the zuck.
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What the fuck Zuck
what the fuck
what the fucks up Zuck
what what the fuck
Phunk Junkeez - Chuck
Every penny (Score:2)
they don't spend tracking and selling your personal information is a good thing.
I am somewhat concerned they didn't spend that money on hires in the US.
Perhaps they will be hoisted on their own petard by EU regulation.
Those pennies are spent on tracking you, though (Score:3, Interesting)
There is exactly one reason why they're doing this. Zuck thinks that AR is the endgame of computing, and he wants to own it so that he can't just track what you do on the Internet, he can track what you do everywhere, at all times.
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And what if teh Zuck ends up owning the metaverse, with little or no competition?
That's not how any of this works. There are already competing metaverses. When Facebook makes one, there will simply be one more. It won't stop creation of another one. What's more, none of these corporate metaverses will link. But I'll bet you money that when open source metaverses become a thing (or if they are already) they'll feature that functionality, so you can jump between worlds. Corporations won't want that because they won't want you leaving theirs. So the corporate stuff will wall itself off to
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FB doesn't need to have the only metaverse, they just need to have an important one.
I predict it will suck and therefore it will not become important. Facebook has already proven their lack of vision with their existing services. They stumbled on a winning formula by accident.
Re:Every penny (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing, because it'll be as successful as Google Glass. It's the sort of thing that gets middle management excited in presentations but is not actually of interest to the masses.
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I am somewhat concerned they didn't spend that money on hires in the US.
This is pretty much all I read into their statement. Maybe we're seeing a turning point where large businesses are deciding that governments that invest in their citizens are worth investing in. They don't have to worry about managing health insurance, they don't have to manage some contractual stuff like maternal/paternal leave, child care is free/heavily subsidized, and elderly/dependent care is heavily subsidized and strongly supported. You know, the kind of infrastructure that makes humans more availabl
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Hear that? (Score:2)
Re:Hear that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it, though?
I think it's pretty plausible that AR devices will eventually replace all other computing devices that have screens. Not this decade, and probably not next decade, either, but maybe the decade after that. If you can just wear glasses, and those glasses replace your phone, your laptop, your PC, your tablet, your watch, why wouldn't you do that? This is a pretty plausible scenario to me.
It's difficult to take market share in an established market. Facebook's phone endeavors went nowhere. There's no way they can release a phone, and gain any kind of market share there. But if they believe that AR devices are the next device form factor that everyone will move to (and maybe the last, since, if they are good enough, they can replace all other devices), and they want to be to AR devices what Windows is to PCs, it makes complete sense to invest in this now, the same way Microsoft worked on operating systems in the 80s, and reaped the rewards in the 90s.
Of course, it's possible that all of this goes nowhere. It's also possible that in 20 years, everyone will be wearing AR glasses with Facebook OS on them, and Facebook controls everybody's data in the same way Apple controls iOS users' data. If that happens, 10 billions is a bargain.
Re: Hear that? (Score:3)
AR is an augmentation and augmenting means to add to. The conclusion that it will replace all screens seems like a huge hop and I think we can explore different scenarios where this wouldn't happen.
Consider an office presentation where everyone has an AR headset. There is general information uniform to the group and detailed information specific to an individual. The presentation can outline goals, benchmarks, and measures. Breakdown of that information to individuals can contain individual results, related
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maybe the last
Second last, surely? The last device form factor would be wetware, direct mind-machine interfacing, brain in a jar stuff.
In any case, AR (and VR) feel very much like 3D TV to me; people (like Facebook) want to create new markets where they can have early-mover advantage, and believe that there's a chance that if they pump in enough hype, the bubble will start to inflate. Anything's possible, but I just don't see this happening. Even if AR devices become mainstream outside of vertical market applications, th
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For example, why go to a movie theatre to sit in front of an IMAX screen watching a blockbuster when you can sit on your couch wearing a pair of VR goggles that simulates that perfectly?
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It is true that there may well be some AR/VR kind of meeting space for people. The thing is that the companies that clean up are rarely first-to-market in this kind of invention, and twenty years is a really long time human history. The big problem with that kind of bet is that there is no way to forecast in detail what value you will offer to someone based on that tech platform.
Take Tiktok - it was based on a pretty simple value proposition: teenagers like making and sending videos, they like music, and
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How much of this is just spending on "content" that can be repurposed, licensed or resold?
Between old Hollywood's own streaming ambitions, Netflix, HBO and Amazon, it makes it increasingly difficult for Facebook to morph into even TV/movie markets if it doesn't go on a content binge.
Then there's some idea that even if this isn't remotely related to filmed content, they could lock up a lot of talent in 3D modeling/gaming type content.
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How much of this is just spending on "content" that can be repurposed, licensed or resold?
I've been wondering that. AR/VR content isn't just pixels (or voxels :) ) - it's also code. So unlike Netflix vs Hulu, where you simply move an MP4 file from drive A to drive B and suddenly it's there on a different provider, AR/VR content seems far less portable. It will be a tower of Babel, at best, unless there is some industry standard agreed format for the data, metadata and code (similar to the active content that's on a Blu-Ray disc). But following such a standard doesn't benefit anyone with skin in
Too bad for the lexicon (Score:3)
Metaverse as a word has a nice buzz to it, only to be associated with fb's shenanigans for the next ten years or so.
--
"The 1st Rule of Project Straychem, sir, is if you have to ask, don't."
More useless shit that we don't need. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe facebook should try fixing issues that we currently have in the physical world, before creating more problems and a virtual opiate.
The real reason (Score:3)
The headline writer misspelled Diversion .
Stop reading Neal Stephenson (Score:2)
Actually I don't wish that, I also had a nuclear powered gattling gun and a pizza delivery boy with samurai swords cause that also sounded cool. It wasn't meant as some sort of actual business idea, and anyone that thought it
$10 billion (Score:2)
Why don't they spend it on the hardware tech instead of software BS waste? Develop a display tech that enables retina display and super high contrast ratio (ie, deep blacks.) If they build such a headset that are so clear you can watch movies and use a virtual laptop in it .. then the metaverse will happen.
Addiction (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be the metaverse unless it's open and it won't be open as long as it's Facebook.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, but, from my perspective, the Internet itself is no longer "open," and won't be for as long as powerful government and/or corporate entities have the power to censor it and to ban anonymous communications.
Society is being divided as we speak between those who will accept tyranny and those who will not. And it's pretty clear that the former group is by far the larger one. It will continue to systematically shut out all those who express the least bit of dissent. Today, that means no social media. Tomorrow, it may mean no buying food or other necessities of life. One can either do the math, or better yet, read history, to see what comes next.
Great! (Score:2)
It's all for looks (Score:2)
Just to make it look like they're doing something for their investors, unless they have some magic trick up their sleeve I doubt there going to get most of their users to put on VR headsets just to visit Facebook. I think this is going to be a flop
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It will be to visit the "Metaverse."
Think Star Trek holodeck or Stephenson's "Snow Crash."
As far as I'm concerned, this is a great thing. (Score:2)
Oculus (Score:2)
Got to find something to do with their Oculus headsets.
Neal Stephenson should sue Zuckerberg (Score:2)
Will Rogers ... (Score:3)
I never meta verse I didn't like.
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