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Mark Zuckerberg Can't Quit the Metaverse 84

Posted by msmash from the arrested-development? dept.
An anonymous reader shares a story: Almost two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg rebranded his company Facebook to Meta -- and since then, he has been focused on building the "metaverse," a three-dimensional virtual reality. But the metaverse has lost some of its luster since 2021. Companies like Disney have closed down their metaverse divisions and deemphasized using the word, while crypto-based startup metaverses have quietly languished or imploded. In 2022, Meta's Reality Labs division reported an operational loss of $13.7 billion. But at Meta Connect 2023, Zuckerberg still hasn't given up on the metaverse -- he's just shifted how he talks about it. He once focused on the metaverse as a completely digital new world. Now, he aims to convince the public that the future is a blend of the digital and the physical.

At Connect this year, Zuckerberg emphasized that the modern "real world" combines the physical world and the digital world still being built -- and that it all builds up to "this concept we call the metaverse." He added: "Pretty soon, I think we're going to be at a point where you're going to be there physically with some of your friends, and others will be there digitally as avatars or holograms, and they'll feel just as present as everyone else. Or you'll walk into a meeting and sit down at a table. There will be people who are there physically and people who are there digitally as holograms, but also sitting around the table with you are going to be a bunch of AI guys who are embodied as holograms and are helping you get different stuff done too."
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Mark Zuckerberg Can't Quit the Metaverse More

Mark Zuckerberg Can't Quit the Metaverse

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  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @03:50PM (#63884435)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Pretty sure we all know Zuck is Dillinger

      • Yes, I'm old. Old enough to remember the Zuck when it was a student ripping off a fellow student. - He started small, and he'll end small.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      His mistake was thinking that users would build the metaverse. They build all the content on Facebook, but that's easy. Copy/paste an ancient JPEG meme, type out a rant, take a selfie. To get into the metaverse you need to spend a lot of money on a headset, and then learn how to make things in it.

      It's just not happening. It's a wasteland. Even where things do get built, they are Facebook quality - recycled crap, with the fidelity declining with every generational copy. Scams, grifts, ads, racist uncles...

  • It has to be said.
    Doors anyone wear glasses with a instead of a lens? Ok why is that acceptable in VR? They should have spent their resources and money on the hardware side instead of the software hacks side. I remember in the 90s and early 2000s I was into optimizing code here and there.. Until finally I said fuck it use better hardware!, more ram and CPU will fix anything.

  • Tax loss harvesting? (Score:3)

    by Nocturrne ( 912399 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @03:59PM (#63884461)

    How does a company spend $13.7bil developing a crappy headset and what is essentially a mobile app with 2010 graphics? I'm starting to think they are losing money on purpose.

  • Whether it comes to reality or not, I am not qualified to predict. But the idea of people being holographically present is nice in many ways if it can be pulled off. Unfortunately, if everybody is wearing an ugly headset that covers their eyes, it kind of eliminates the point of being there in person. And there are many companies in the holographic meeting startup space. If one of them comes out with a product that people like, they will be wildly successful. However, I'm a bit confused as the Meta versi

    • As long as it is not possible to have a high enough resolution that you can actually READ what someone writes on a virtual white board, the whole shit won't fly. And we're far, far away from that.

      So far, I still cannot identify any relevant advantage to a simple Teams meeting.

      • The advantage is, of course, that you can tell if somebody is paying attention or is distracted or not. People are trying other solutions to that problem like Zoom having a feature to indicate whether a participant has put the app in the background. But you're right in that, for situations where people all want to be there and are engaged, a Zoom meeting is pretty good. I even once attended a baby shower via Zoom and it was pretty fun. Nicer in some ways than a real meeting in that we didn't have to go

        • You call that an advantage? If anything, the advantage of Teams/Zoom meetings compared to in-person ones were that you can pretend to be there and listen to the droning of the narcissist while you can get some meaningful work accomplished.

          That you could put the droning narcissist into the background is a feature, not a bug!

          • If all of your meetings are with droning narcissists, I agree, that a VR environment is solving the wrong problem. Fortunately for me, most of my meetings are *not* with droning narcissists. (Although some are)

            • Fortunately not all. But in the other meetings, Zoom/Teams is at the very least not a disadvantage, so it comes out ahead.

  • This is a Halloween post, right? Cause this is cree-pay!

  • Stand firm, Mark! Hold onto your convictions! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @04:08PM (#63884483)

    Don't let the nay-sayers get you down! You just keep shoveling more and more billions of your personal and corporate fortunes into the metaverse - it will eventually pay off!

    In fact, double down! Increase your annual spending!

    • Don't let the nay-sayers get you down! You just keep shoveling more and more billions of your personal and corporate fortunes into the metaverse - it will eventually pay off!

      In fact, double down! Increase your annual spending!

      You bet! Zuckerberg is making the mistake many wealthy people make. He thinks any idea that pops into his head is the best idea evah!

      Truth is, he got lucky with Facebook. Just like some others, say, Elon Musk. After showing their business "genius" to the world, they surround themselves with yes people.

      And well, he does seem to be reazlly good at burning through a hella lot of money, and quickly.

      • The Irony is , I cant think of any original ideas he's had that made money.

        Facebook was stolen off the Winkelvoss brothers, Instagram and whatsapp aquired, Occulus aquired and run into the ground. I doubt he personally invented ReactJS. He sure as hell didnt invent LLMs or Transformers.

        Has Zuck invented *anything*?

        • Has Gates?

          Seriously, these "inventors" usually just rip someone off, then use that money to buy someone else's work.

        • The Irony is , I cant think of any original ideas he's had that made money.

          Facebook was stolen off the Winkelvoss brothers, Instagram and whatsapp aquired, Occulus aquired and run into the ground. I doubt he personally invented ReactJS. He sure as hell didnt invent LLMs or Transformers.

          Has Zuck invented *anything*?

          Nope, he just got lucky.

        • You don't need original ideas as a CEO, you need to decide which ideas are worth pursuing and how hard. That's what made him successful. He stope the Winkelvoss idea ( which was not new at that time anyways) and pushed it much harder than most had previously or likely would given the adoption failure of similar apps. Once successful, he didn't take a buy out that would have made him a multimillionaire, he kept betting big on himself and his team. That's what hes doing here as well. But He doesn't have a te

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          The Irony is , I cant think of any original ideas he's had that made money.

          Facebook was stolen off the Winkelvoss brothers, Instagram and whatsapp aquired, Occulus aquired and run into the ground. I doubt he personally invented ReactJS. He sure as hell didnt invent LLMs or Transformers.

          Has Zuck invented *anything*?

          Ah, no? Why would anybody think he has?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Musk made 150 million from Paypal. Lots of people made the same or more during the dot com boom and people like Gates and Buffett were already billionaires. The difference is once they made their money they investedd it in a safe portfolio of companies, land, financial instruments and kept enough stock in their own companies to be decisionmakers.

        Musk bet his entire fortune into SpaceX and Tesla. if those had bombed he would be a broke guy with an undergrad in Physics.

        The bets paid off and he is the ri

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by labnet ( 457441 )

          Musk may not be competent at everything and hires smart people for the same but he has balls of steel.

          Thats what separates Musk from the rest. His ability to take insane amounts of risk.

          • It's kinda easy to take insane amounts of risk if you have a rich family to fall back on in case your risk doesn't pay off.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ghoul ( 157158 )
              He pretty much cut his ties with his rich South African dad when he went to stay with his Canadian model mom. Doubt his dad would have bailed him out if he blew up his paypal fortune. Bill gates mom and Buffetts dad were also rich. I didnt see Bill or Warren bet their entire fortune on a long shot company.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by _merlin ( 160982 )

            Microsoft selling a BASIC interpreter for the Altair that they hadn't written yet was a pretty big risk, too. Gates was always going to get filthy rich or fail big time.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Musk bet *a large fraction of his disposable wealth* into SpaceX and Tesla. if those had bombed he would be a *stupendously wealthy* guy with an undergrad in Physics*, his family's emerald mine, and millions of dollars in stocks, shares and other holdings*

          FTFY. It's easy to take risks when failing still leaves you richer than 99.99% of the population.

          Balls of steel? No. Safety net of gold.

        • So to get rich, you have to win the lottery jackpot, but to become the richest man in the world, you have to win the lottery jackpot twice.

          That's essentially what happened for Musk.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ghoul ( 157158 )
            Yes but how many lottery winners bet their entire winnings on a second lottery? As I said balls of steel

            • You'd be surprised...

              Most, if not all, of them fail, though. But as you can see, sometimes they are lucky.

        • Are you trying to create some weird Musk-hero mythology? Musk did not invest ALL his money into Tesla and SpaceX. He invested in all sorts of shit, most of it Thiel also invested in.

          If Tesla and SpaceX had failed, he would have still been a millionaire. And, like most failing CEOs, once failure was imminent he would have increased his salary and started cashing out huge bonuses. Then he would have sold the company.

          You make it sound like he risked being a pauper. All he risked was being less wealthy.

    • It's not nice to egg on someone trying to break down a wall by butting his head against it.

      Ok, I admit, it's fun. But not nice.

  • Said it before⦠(Score:4, Interesting)

    by crmarvin42 ( 652893 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @04:30PM (#63884539)
    ⦠And Iâ(TM)ll say it again. The Metaverse is a long con from Zuck to keep investors thinking FB is a growth stock. As such, it solves no customer problems, and never will do so. The sooner we stop talking about it, the sooner this will become clear to investors, the stock will tank, and itâ(TM)ll go away (hopefully taking down Zuck with it).

  • no doubt about it.

  • Mostly meetings are being communicated at the manager level, so it's thin on details.
    The idea that there will be holograms and AI "guys" will definitely be a major distraction, needing even more meetings to get the point across.

  • a *virtual* bridge?

  • Fine! (Score:2)

    by Chas ( 5144 )

    Let him continue to pour his own and company money into this boondoggle.
    Overpromise, underdeliver.

  • Wait. I meant build Apple Vision Pro, morons! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dnorman ( 135330 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @05:41PM (#63884699) Homepage

    They're "pivoting" to mixed reality, interestingly only after having their balls handed to them by a _pre release demo_ of Apple's Vision Pro. It hasn't even shipped, and when it does it's more expensive than 99% of people will buy (until later models bring the cost down), and Meta rapidly pivots tens-of-billions-of-dollars worth of investments from "THE 3D METAVERSE IS THE FUTURE WOOOO!" to "We _meant_ to say that mixed reality is the important part of this. Why are you confused about what we're trying to build?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by steveha ( 103154 )

      They're "pivoting" to mixed reality, interestingly only after having their balls handed to them by a _pre release demo_

      I'm pretty sure that they must have worked on Quest 3 for years before releasing it. They didn't have enough time to watch the Apple demo and then change their product design.

  • In all fairness this podcast [youtube.com] shows what is possible. ..And all the bs which comes into these things, I know. But still, these things are possible. And with enough time -- this particular company or one of its many competitors, probable even. Look at the bricks we called phones in the 1980s for comparison.

  • What Zuck needs is a series of meetings. The ones that start with "I'm Mark Zuckerberg and I'm a metaholic".

  • Possibly ahead of his time? (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @07:22PM (#63884907) Journal

    There might be a day when mixed/augmented/holographic reality meetings make sense; but it's not today. This might be the flip side of the innovator's dilemma being played out in real life--the big company is really trying, but they're destined to fail. The metaverse, if it's ever to be a thing, will be a thing that arises from a different source, when all the pieces fall in to place and the right people come along to assemble them.

    • Mixed/augmented/holographic reality will certainly be a great entertainment and leisure tool, but it will never be a sensible work tool.

      Work needs to be efficient. That's the core goal of any kind of work. Now, let's take a look at gaming again, because this is where VR and motion control is already a thing and answer me this: Take any kind of game, let's say, a shooter. Now compare controlling your character with keyboard and mouse to controlling it with your body and motion tracking. Which one is more eff

      • I would really have a hard time seeing a "virtual" meeting in any way superior to one that is handled via a tool like Teams or Zoom.

        For real. The only possible reason 'meetings' would be the go-to example for a VR/AR system is because the people who need to be 'sold' on the idea have jobs that primarily consist of 'attending meetings'.

        Approximately one hundred percent of Slashdotters have left a meeting saying 'that could have been an e-mail'. If Zoom and Teams aren't improvements, AR/VR sure as hell won't be.

        • First, the equipment is WAY too pricey that mere mortals will be subjected to them. It's only going to be the bigwigs who will be handed the new toys. If we play our cards right and make sure we provide them with the relevant configurations, they will strut about like it's the new big thing and we can continue doing some relevant work while they get to play in their overpriced playpen.

          Think blackberry, just up a notch.

  • Even so... (Score:4, Funny)

    by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Thursday September 28, 2023 @08:03PM (#63884963) Homepage

    "Pretty soon, I think we're going to be at a point where you're going to be there physically with some of your friends, and others will be there digitally as avatars or holograms, and they'll feel just as present as everyone else." - Zuck

    ... but even then you'll STILL have to come in physically to work at Meta, or else it's just not going to work out for you. -Zuck

  • The Metaverse is anything you want it to be!
    We should build what Neal Stephenson described in Snow Crash and give it away just to piss Zuck and the crypto fanbois off.

  • I too watched star trek discovery.

  • Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quanminoan ( 812306 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @09:43PM (#63885125)

    I don't care if he puts out the demo of all demos and promises data to be kept private, Facebook/Meta has always gone the route of eventually collecting and using all possible data legally available about an individual. Can't support that.

  • No one wants it. It is dead.

  • ... still alive?

  • Welcome to the Looneyverse.

  • This still isn't clear, even from their web page. I can't tell whether it's online or being built.

    I have a quest 2, I'll buy the Vision Pro in a few months.

    Meta really messed up when they priced software as though they were a console rather than a mobile device.

    And honestly, VR only makes sense as a toy. AR actually adds value

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