The metaverse is a sh*tshow. Dead servers. Lackluster graphics. Trolls. And in some cases, a requirement to purchase expensive hardware. It's no wonder then that Facebook parent Meta has struggled to get anyone to give a damn about its virtual worlds, despite burning billions in cash.
Yes, Facebook may have gone all in on founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision for the future, but it's unlikely that Zuck and his friends at 1 Hacker Way are popping champagne to celebrate the events following his company's decision to double down on a technology that has yet to achieve mass appeal.
It's been a year since Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta and unveiled the 'infinity' logo, signaling, perhaps, the lure of infinite virtual worlds to the masses, yet nothing has gone its way ever since. The idea that people will purchase expensive headsets just to have strangers throw profanities at them in a video game that looks worse than a PS2-era title has already cost the company more than half of its stock price and wiped $650 billion in its market value.
The latest setback came this past Thursday after the company's quarterly results showed that losses at Reality Labs, an internal division responsible for developing Meta's take on the metaverse, kept on widening and will continue to do so going into 2023. Understandably, investors weren't happy, causing Meta's stock to take another nosedive:
While Zuckerberg has no plans of slowing down, it truly is worth asking: just how bad are things in the metaverse? Companies besides Meta may offer a glimpse. Take Decentraland for example: just a few weeks ago, the company said it had 8,000 daily active users on its platform — a laughingly low number for a company valued at $1.2 billion.
While nowhere near as disastrous as Decentraland, Roblox too has struggled to get the same level of users as during the COVID-19 pandemic when the youth-centered platform became all the rave. All of this is to say that while the metaverse might sound pretty cool on paper, the concept itself just doesn't stick and ends up feeling like a bygone MMO with dead servers. Zuck probably knows this, which is why he's trying to bamboozle fellow mega corporations into getting their employees to use the metaverse instead. Bad news though, working in the metaverse is not pleasant.
Meta would neither be the first (nor the last!) to fail at introducing the concept of a world-within-a-world to the public at large, though its flop may be the most spectacular given the company's sheer size and scope. As this author opines in The Washington Post, Facebook's fate may be the same as Second Life.
Facebook continues to be on the lips of everyone, helping it maintain the top rank on HackerNoon's Tech Company Ranking. Its parent, Meta was trending #10. Fellow metaverse peer Roblox was trending #2.
Adidas Kicks Ye Habit🏃
Adidas forayed into the metaverse last year after announcing a partnership with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, PUNKS Comic and gmoney, generating $23.4 million in a single afternoon following its debut. Still, that wasn't enough to reverse the company's fortunes. Just like Meta, the company's stock price has been battered since at least the start of the year given its poor financial performance and a drop in demand for its sneakers.
Now, it's had to discontinue its partnership with Kanye West (who is legally known as Ye) over his anti-semitic comments, costing the company $250 million towards its net income given that it no longer wants to sell the highly profitable Yeezy line of sneakers. Adidas did react a lot more slowly to Ye's comments than some other brands, resulting in a backlash and mounting pressure from the public to do the right thing.
Must Wants to Sell You Freedom💰
Elon Musk finally acquired Twitter Inc., and OH.MY.GOD the news cycle has been going crazy. In fact, Musk was so comprehensively covered in the news that it became reminiscent of how the media reported on Donald Trump before and during his presidency.
While the 'will he, won't he' portion of the acquisition saga ended this past Friday, the 'what now' portion began with some high-profile layoffs. After walking into Twitter HQ with an actual sink (presumably just for that one pun), Musk, the world's richest man, fired top executives, including Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. Before you start feeling sorry for either of them, the former Twitter executives are expected to make millions from the exit.
However, you should feel sorry for the nearly 2,000 people who will be laid off as part of Musk's to trim the fat around the company, presumably, in such a way, that Twitter doesn't owe the laid-off employees any stock grants.
When all is said and done though, Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist who believes Twitter is a lot more valuable than it currently is, wants to make the platform more attractive to advertisers (though brands aren't buying it, yet).
Meanwhile, Wall Street is wondering whether it's even sustainable for Musk to be managing so many companies. He's already the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and if his new Twitter profile description ('Chief Twit') is any indication, he may be heading Twitter himself too.
Twitter was trending #41 this week, while Musk's other company Tesla was trending #48 on HackerNoon's Tech Rankings.
COVID-19 Impacts iPhone Production📱
A new report from Reuters indicates that production of Apple's iPhone could drop by as much as 30% as the Chinese factory that manufactures the smartphones deals with COVID-19-related lockdowns.
While manufacturing is continuing as planned, the decline could make iPhones harder to find, at least temporarily, and may result in scalpers selling you the smartphones at an even higher price point on websites like eBay.
Apple ranked #7 in this week's tech rankings.
And that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading Tech Company News Brief Issue #22! See y’all next week. PEACE ☮️
— Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon
