mark zuckerberg bet everything on metaverse and intends to make it his main source of income in the near future. In an interview with CNBCthe CEO of Meta anticipated that expect a billion people to join to their idea of a connected future and make purchases of virtual goods. In general terms, zucks wants the world to become a second version of secondlife, but with technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality.
“Basically, we expect to reach about a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars in trade, each buying digital goods,” Zuckerberg said. The co-founder of Facebook anticipates that transactions for clothing or accessories for avatars, virtual conference rooms and tools for productivity will boost the company’s profits during the second half of the decade.
The head of Meta considers the progress in virtual reality and augmented reality as the main axis of his project. This will allow more immersive and realistic experiences that will bring people togetherregardless of whether they are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Zuckerberg anticipates that the metaverse solve problems as simple as making eye contact in a conversationsomething that is complicated in a video call.
The company invests large amounts of money in realizing the vision of Mark Zuckerberg, although getting billions of users will not be easy.
But I still think it will take a while to get to the scale of several hundred million or even billions of people in the metaverse, just because things take some time to get there. I think we’ll get there. But, you know, the other services that we have are already on a somewhat larger scale today.
Although WhatsApp, Messenger or Facebook already exceed the barrier of one billion users, taking it as a reference for the metaverse is somewhat risky. Meta’s current services use a device used by billions of people around the world: the mobile. For all of us to experience his version of the future, Zuckerberg would have to mass use of virtual reality.
Ever since the Oculus Rift took the world by storm in 2013, some assumed it would be the catalyst for mass adoption of the technology. Almost ten years later, the advances are significant and a powerful computer is no longer required to experience it. Nevertheless, applications outside of video games or entertainment are scarce. Meta will need to spend money on improving hardware and user experiences to lower the barrier to entry.
Meta has no problem spending money to materialize her idea
“We’re a company that can afford to invest heavily in long-term research, and this is a great approach,” Zuckerberg said. Meta’s CEO says his goal is take your services to billions of people and then scale monetization.
In the case of the metaverse, the main source of income would be purchases of virtual assets. Zuckerberg and company have already started experimenting with selling clothes for your avatar. Designer collections were launched a few days ago to be purchased with real money. Apparently, the technology is inspired by the business model of some online games that generate billions of dollars.
It will take a while to find out if Mark Zuckerberg’s bet worked or the metaverse was more smoke than Hideo Kojima’s creative process.