It was FOMO. They had no vision, they had no plan, it was clear that it was only a thing because it was a buzzword at the time. Just like every other company stuffing crypto-adjacent things everywhere. It might have been a bet, but it was obvious that it was a really terrible one.
I do not know where this notion that Meta has given up on the metaverse comes from. Mark continues to talk about AR/VR at every opportunity and Reality Labs continues to invest big on it. The metaverse is a bet but its a 10 year bet that has not been played out yet.
What other companies (besides Apple and a few startups that were specifically in the metaverse space) went in on the metaverse?
I think this was very much unlike AI and crypto, where everybody wanted a piece of the pie. Meta seemed a lot more invested in this than most of the other tech players, which makes FOMO an unlikely explanation to me.
Reminds me of Ballmer buying Nokia or Cook buying Beats (or whatever the company was called.) Cook's bet might have worked out a little better than Nokia.
Not really.
FB was choked by Apple and trolled by Google for so long, Zuck understood his position without a hardware platform in the furture.
XR seems to be a reasonable bet which he already have an edge.
If he won, he won big.
It was FOMO. They had no vision, they had no plan, it was clear that it was only a thing because it was a buzzword at the time. Just like every other company stuffing crypto-adjacent things everywhere. It might have been a bet, but it was obvious that it was a really terrible one.