Zuckerberg's Metaverse To Lose 'Significant' Money in Near Term (bloomberg.com) 67
Mark Zuckerberg said he plans to invest heavily in his company's metaverse ambitions and that will mean losing "significant" amounts of money on the project in the next three to five years. From a report: The metaverse, an immersive digital world, will eventually make money from a creator economy, as people build businesses selling virtual goods and services, the Meta Platforms chief executive officer said, responding to a question about return on investment at the company's annual shareholder meeting Wednesday. "We want to get the hardware to be as affordable as possible for everyone, and make sure the digital economy grows," Zuckerberg said.
Title/Summary correction: (Score:1, Insightful)
Privacy Rapist's Metaverse To Lose 'Significant' Money in Near Term
Meta Chief Privacy Rapist said he plans to invest heavily in his company's...
There FTFY.
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Not that I have existing Friendface/Titter/etc accounts but all this OMG WEB 3!?!?!!! shit seems to be entirely one-sided ... the supply side.. not the demand side...
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Trying to create a solution to a problem that does not exist.
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Of course! The Covid lockdowns were a trial run of this.
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And one that ignores that we've already tried it , and it sucked.
Second Life is pretty much everything the metaverse evangalists have been proclaiming, its nearly 20 years old, and never once in that period ever didn't blow fat goats.
Its entire premise was cooked. Instead of playing regular games, why not create virtual things to sell to each other for real money. Except nobody blows off steam to make money. They blow off steam because making money is this dreary awful thing we do 5 days out of 7 for most o
Followed by crash .. (Score:2)
...and burn
Yeah, ok (Score:3)
Re: Yeah, ok (Score:2)
Yeah billionaires and trust fund kids live in a very different world than you or I.
I wish I had money to waste on grand but useless endevours.
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Well it's their insatiable greed.
all they can see is that the could have a virtual world with hundreds of millions of people, and would be able to skim a percentage of every single transaction.
also, the possibilities to manipulate people are endless. there's a lot of money in propaganda.
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You're onto something.
It's the grown up version of the childhood dream, "If I could just get everyone in the World to send me a penny."
Except, like all billionaires, he already has the money. What he's after now is legacy, and maybe, continued relevance.
It's filled with stars... (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't build my own Amazon, so I'll make a virtual world that somehow --- waves hands --- people will be able to virtually exist in so Amazon will have to create a storefront that I can suck fees off of every transaction each virtual person makes --- waves hands --- profit someday...
At some point, you've added too many layers. I've thought that about app stores and their apps already, but throw a virtual world in there? I know science fiction likes to pretend the virtual world would be better than the one we're in, but it's got a long way to go for a lot of us and for the ones who don't have the funds for good VR gear - do they have the money to spend to enter the virtual world much less buy anything?
Re: It's filled with stars... (Score:2)
In my VR metadoohicky, I am lord and master, with peoole chained by the neck to the armrests of my gigantic throne, and the whole world, also chained up by the neck, toils and labors to death to make me happy.
Make believe is fun!
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Sure, make believe is fun. But for his metaverse to succeed he has to figure out a way to generate revenue in his virtual world and that comes down to taking a cut of people's storefront action. Or taxing your virtual slaves. At that point, your virtual experience in his metaverse becomes less desireable and you go elsewhere. And you might have been going for sarcasm about the whole metaverse - your comment could be read either way - and if so, apologies.
Re: It's filled with stars... (Score:4, Interesting)
But for his metaverse to succeed he has to figure out a way to generate revenue in his virtual world
he already figured that out with facebook (ok, with some luck and a little help from his friends). he only needs thee things for his metaverse: a headset, a recorder, and meat.
the headset has to be dirty cheap so millions of sheeple can afford it, but it has to be autonomous and with sufficient quality and comfort that it can be worn for a significant portion of the day. such a thing doesn't exist right now, but is not at all impossible.
next he needs a cheap device to record vr content, ideally with the same headset. this is much simpler, but still needs to be done.
the other thing he needs is "meat" for users to chew on, but once the device exists then the users will eagerly provide all that meat and more, just as they did with fb.
so this news is actually the first sensible thing i have heard about all this whole metaverse hype ever: expect 5 years of heavy investment and frantic r&d before even thinking of a product. i would add another 5 or 10 years to that just to be sure.
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While people can and do read Facebook for a significant portion of the day, they can do that because it doesn't require the user's full continuous attention. They can watch TV or keep or eye on their kids at the same time.
This headset would require the users full attention while in use. I don't think people would be willing to do that. They are even have trouble convincing people to play games in VR where full attention is required anyway to play many games.
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true for today's headsets, but that's relative.
it seems to me almost everyone is totally immersed in their phones while, e.g., commuting in a train or sitting in a park, i can perfectly see them diving into alternate reality for that duration. it all depends on the device. it has to be uber comfortable, easy to carry around and put on and off and it needs to allow a seamless switch to "meatspace", be it via camera or maybe being more "ar" than "vr" to begin with. such a device, doubling as phone and persona
It's especially silly because 33% of the populatio (Score:2)
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Totally agree, the current generation of VR headsets rely on strong lenses attempting to focus your eyes on a tiny screen an inch or two away. Gives me eyestrain, and the motion sickness hits me also.
The saddest song on the tiniest violin (Score:2)
He'll be forced to stop playing with toys and switch to producing grown up tools.
But in the long term (Score:5, Funny)
...well it's basically a summation of all of the short term losses.
virtual goods are... (Score:2)
Re:virtual goods are... (Score:4)
Let me correct you there. Virtual Goods are worth what people will pay for them. Just like art. To someone a painting of some melting clocks is worth millions. To me its worth 10 bucks and I will still feel like I over paid.
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The painting is a one-of-a-kind physical object. You can also pay $10 for a mass produced poster of it. For some people that's good enough. Or you can pay $200 for a hand painted reproduction. Some people think it's worth it. Or if you're super wealthy you can pay millions for the original. I can't judge whether it's worth it for someone with that much money. Either way, you're certainly getting something different. A poster is not the same as an original oil painting.
With the virtual goods, there's
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Another thing that people don't think about virtual goods is someone has to make them. These things don't just spring up out of nowhere. Someone has to create the model, someone has to script it, and someone has market it.
My personal example. I'm a builder/scripter in Second Life for 10 years. When I quote someone a real life price for a script some of them lose their minds. In a world where they are used to paying a dollar or two for something then get quoted $100 or more for something. They don
Re: virtual goods are... (Score:2)
The "art world" has always been filled with lunatics and borderline psychopaths.
Sometimes this can be a good thing, but in other cases you have people willing to pay millions of dollars for a literal pile of trash, while an artist would be lucky to get a couple hundered bust for a beautiful painting that was painstakingly crafted.
It is what it is, and it's never going to change.
Re: virtual goods are... (Score:1)
"couple hundered bust" - bucks
Re:virtual goods are virtually worthless. (Score:2)
Bullshit is popular, so it seems virtual bullshit will also be popular. It's not like such loses value in translation.
Go easy on him, guys (Score:2)
Can't fault a guy for wanting to get back home! Beep boop beep.
Color me impressed... (Score:2)
Cartooney (Score:2)
Crap will definitely fail long term also.
Lol "creator" economy (Score:2)
No economy is going to start up in this disaster when they are charging a 50% cut of profits. Apple is getting rightfully called a monopolist for charging 30% on their app platform and they provide a much better deal.
Many competitors will find it trivial to undercut these greedy privacy haters, this will never make money or be the main place people spend time in VR.
bet so big (Score:1)
Sunk cost fallacy at work (Score:2)
Well, he really and truly fucked himself there. Must have ignored tons of competent advice to do so as well.
He predicting/ deciding to lose in the future (Score:5, Informative)
My understanding of the sunk cost fallacy is that it refers to reasoning like this:
We've ALREADY spent so much, we have to finish it now.
Sunk cost is being fixated on what you've ALREADY spent. Using what was spent in the past as justification for continuing.
I think here Zuckerberg is making a statement about the future - he *plans* to invest a lot, because he thinks it'll be a good investment long term. That's not using past spending as justification. His justification is he expects future benefits (profits). He may be right or wrong, but either way it's not sunk cost fallacy because his reason for doing it is future gain, not past costs.
This is as good a place as any to mention the reverse sunk cost fallacy. It's ALSO fallacy to say "we've spent a billion dollars, that's too much; we should cancel the program." You see that with the SLS, F-22, etc. You can't unspend the SLS budget. Refusing to launch the rocket is just a decision to WASTE that money rather than reaping the benefit, rather than using what was built.
The proper calculation is simply:
How much will we need to spend in the future, vs how much do we expect to gain?
Past costs on a project are history, cannot be changed, and therefore do not factor into making correct decisions for the future. They are neither a reason to continue nor a reason to stop.
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The "cost" in the fallacy does not need to be money. ZuckTheFuck has invested a lot of his credibility and reputation into this. All that will be gone when he admits what is blatantly obvious now. So he tries to save things by throwing more of his credibility at the lost cause. Money does probably not mean much to him anymore anyways with the obscene amount of it he has. But how others perceive him obviously matters a lot to him.
For a financial sunk-cost situation you are perfectly correct, also on how to d
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What you've said makes sense if we're talking about someone who realizes that they are not invincible and that not all of their idea are good ones. People who don't think that everything they touch turns to gold, people who unsweetened that can and do make mistakes.
I'm not sure that applies to Zuckerberg. I don't know of any evidence suggesting he's realized it was a bad idea. As far as I can tell, he's just as confident now as he ever was. So again - he's doing it because he thinks it will work.
He probably
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Hmm. Possibly. I felt there was a bit of desperation visible in his "metaverse" efforts, but I could well be wrong. Especially as I find this person his and work so utterly boring, I think I have never even heard him speak so far and I certainly do not follow his efforts closely. Well, so possibly not an example of the sunk cost fallacy after all.
I certainly share that /. experience, although because I do not desire to doxx myself, I cannot share my actual credentials (yes, my name is on some RFC's too, for
Re: He predicting/ deciding to lose in the future (Score:2)
"Money does probably not mean much to him anymore"
Yeah, he should send that money to people that actually care about it, where 100$ can mean the difference between having a roof over your head, or being put out on the streets and being preyed upon.
But scince runaway capitalism and grand waste (as long it's not "those people") is king, and doing anything like I propose will make all the Bolsheviks take over America in the blink of an eye somehow, just forget what I said.
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Refusing to launch the rocket is just a decision to WASTE that money rather than reaping the benefit, rather than using what was built.
The rocket costs more to launch than the other rockets we've already got, so you're just coming back to try to justify the sunk cost fallacy again. If it produced a superior solution then it would still make sense to launch it, but it doesn't. We launched it literally only to justify spending the money on it, which we in turn did literally only because we could produce pork in the process.
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There's a rocket that can carry the same payload at a lower cost? That's cool. I'm not big into space rockets, so I wouldn't know. Which one can carry 46 tons to the moon for less cost? Actually, which other rocket can carry anywhere close to that kind of payload at all, for any cost?
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What does Zuckerberg have to do with Snapchat stock price? Metaface and Snapchat are like totally different companies.
This is the topic of many books and films.. (Score:1)
Re: This is the topic of many books and films.. (Score:2)
It's like the number of people who rush down to see a train wreck vs railfans who want to see the trains operating normally.
Or to say what a Youtuber who films himself just driving through various cities:
"Whenever I start showing nice areas, I don't get nearly as many views, so here are some more ghetto areas for you to enjoy."
How many $billion until they define it (Score:3)
One thing I don't think I've ever seen defined is WTF a "metaverse" even is.
I read Snow Crash. I know what the Metaverse is in that novel: it's a virtual world that can be accessed via VR.
But that already exists. We can already do that. There are plenty of virtual worlds to choose from. VR exists. We can do virtual worlds in VR. We can do virtual meetings in VR. These things exist.
The metaverse, an immersive digital world, will eventually make money from a creator economy, as people build businesses selling virtual goods and services
All these things already exist. You can already make money selling virtual goods and services. Maybe not good money, but such things already exist.
So, what exactly is Zuckerburg even building? What is the point to this thing? What does it do that justifies spending billions on? Why would anyone want to "join" this metaverse? Why is it "better" than any existing solution? How is this not just Second Life but Somehow Even Creepier?
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The Metaverse for Facebook is basically creating a place where they can sell people expensive stuff while showing them ads. In VR.
Second Life + Addiction (Score:2)
Just like facebook itself, they will employ every psychological trick they can google and maybe even hire to make it addictive to counter the fact it's not that useful and does nothing new except perhaps replacing everything with an all-in-one walled garden. Like AOL, like facebook.
I initially thought it was a PR move to distract from them destroying civil societies and democracies worldwide. Somehow they are buying into this for real and they think it will be something in the near future! Guess their lac
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You hit it on the nose there. This is exactly "Second Life but somehow even creepier." Zuck wants the metaverse to be a walled garden only he controls, and thinks with enough money and force of will he can make it so. If he even read Snow Crash he clearly didn't get the point.
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The biggest Meta-deficit ever (Score:2)
At least, I hope so.
He doesn't have any products besides Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
So what he's trying to do is the same thing Google did with the Android where Google diversified in order to make sure that they could survive if they lost search as their main revenue source. Of course being Mark Zuckerberg he's doing it in the most cynical and evil way possible so he's trying to figure out how to become a digital landlord and do things like sell the concept of ownership of virtual goods with little or no entertainment value to people. It's the same thing video game companies are jonesing for like square enix. Everybody wants to figure out how to sell something to take zero effort to make for big bucks. And since a suckers born every minute that might actually work.
Given how evil a company Facebook is though and how much damage they've done towards civilization I'm honestly hoping that they blow all their money for nothing. I'm also more than a bit insulted that they think I'm dumb enough to buy into this metaverse crap.
They fucked up (Score:2)
Instead of building an awesome headset, they tried to build a town nobody wants. You know like those ghost malls and towns in China. What they should have done is made an awesome headset and then let people build their own towns for it in the metaverse. Just make sure it is easy to navigate and access content.
The Quest 2 doesn't provide a sense of being in a different world. The resolution sucks. The picture quality is terrible. in the real world, the full moon occupies a half degree in diameter. You look a
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Yeah, but that's actual engineering that would move the needle, and cost a shitload of money. Instead of dealing with manufacturing low cost high resolution head-mounted displays, it's far cheaper and easier to make everything cartoony so that realism doesn't matter, because you're actively running away from it.
Remember, these are software guys. If you can't come up with some lazy cheap hack, then it's a problem for someone else.
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Long term (Score:1)
selling virtual goods and services (Score:1)
I don't want a headset (Score:3)
I want a pair of glasses like those in Virtual Light. Give me that. I don't want to sit around in my house and tune out the world. I want more information on the world.
I don't think many investors will read past the (Score:2)
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