In October 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Taking his multi-trillion-dollar social media company in a new direction. Facebook changes its name to Meta Zuckerberg has set his sights on a new horizon, the virtual universe.
“There was a real need and a desire to rebrand into something else,” said Leo Gebbie, principal analyst and director at CCS Insight. “Facebook wanted to make it clear that it was more than just a social networking site.”
Although the term “metaverse” predates Facebook, Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambitions have been growing since 2014 when Facebook acquired virtual reality headset developer Oculus and Launch of Reality Lab. Seven years after the global pandemic, global video game industry revenue reaches peak $193 billion. Meta and Wall Street see an opportunity to capitalize on the growing online population with the wave of virtual reality headsets.
“There’s a feeling going into 2020 and 2021 that this technology is ready and it’s finally going to take off,” Gebbie said. “We’ve had a lot of false dawns in virtual reality in the past.”
December 2021, Horizon World launches in the US And marks Meta’s entry into the open world virtual reality platform space. Meta’s short-term goals are 500,000 monthly active users It will appear in Horizon World at the end of the year. But its long-term goals are more ambitious. In June 2022, Zuckerberg told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that he expected The number of users will reach 1 billion by the end of this century. Do “e-commerce worth hundreds of dollars per person”.
The company still has a long way to go.
an insider report Published by The Wall Street Journal In 2022, “Horizon World” was less than a year old and had only about 200,000 monthly active users. Now, three years later, the term “Metaverse” has largely disappeared from public conversation. Google Trends Noticed a sharp drop in searches for the term after 2022.
To make matters worse, Reality Labs is hemorrhaging cash and piling up funds Operating loss $58 billion Since 2020. Through cooperation with Ray-Ban on AR glasses.
Meta did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
What happened to the Metaverse? What exactly is the Metaverse? So where is Meta today? watch video learn more.
— CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
