Meta Platforms Inc., Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, said that he remains optimistic about the future of the metaverse over a “five-to-ten-year horizon” despite widespread skepticism of his company’s venture into the technology, he said during the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday.
See related article: Will Facebook’s metaverse future transform how we live online?
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“Skepticism doesn’t bother me too much,” Zuckerberg said, speaking to the event’s attendees virtually. “We’ve had doubters the whole time.”Zuckerberg said that the division of the company responsible for building the metaverse and virtual and augmented reality headsets, Reality Labs, only represents about 20% of the company’s investment portfolio as Meta remains prioritized on social media.The company formally known as Facebook rebranded as “Meta” in October 2021 in a sign it was pivoting to metaverse-related businesses. Despite spending billions of dollars investing in its metaverse, Horizon Worlds, users have not flocked to the new platform.While the company had originally set a goal to have 500,000 active monthly users by the end of the year, that number was only hovering around 200,000 in October.This has so far proven to be a costly venture for the company which has sunk at least US$10 billion into the project.Users continue to criticize the platform’s graphics and lack of inspired activities to do there. “Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg for upgrading his Metaverse avatar from looking like a creepy PS1 era model to an Xbox360 default avatar,” wrote one Twitter user.Meta also joined the list of major tech firms to announce significant lay-offs recently, as it shed 11,000, or 13% of its workforce in early November.Zuckerberg addressed this downsizing on Wednesday, admitting that he missed the significant downturns in the economy.
See related article: Zuckerberg’s Meta plans to lay off thousands of employees: WSJ report
