The Metaverse is Mark Zuckerberg's escape hatch

If his new strategy works - a big if - it could help address several of Facebook's biggest problems

When Mark Zuckerberg appeared onscre­en at Facebook’s virtual Connect confer­ence on Thursday, he looked like a man unburdened.

Whistle-blower? What whistle-blo­wer? Instead, Zuckerberg and his lieut­ena­nts cheerfully laid out their vision for the so-called metaverse, the immersive virtu­al environment that Facebook — which, as of Thursday, has been renamed Meta. The company already has over 10,000 people working on augmented and virtual reality projects — roughly twice as many people as are on Twitter’s entire staff — and has said it plans to hire 10,000 more in Europe soon. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods with each others’ virtual avatars. Zuckerberg is staking Facebook’s future on the bet th­at it will become real, saying that the it will be a “successor to the mobile internet.”

A successful metaverse pivot could help solve at least four big, thorny problems Facebook faces here in the terrestrial worl­d. Its core social media bus­iness is aging, and younger users are abandoning its apps in favour of TikTok, Snapchat and other, cooler apps. 

Facebook’s youth problem hasn’t hurt it financially yet, but ad revenue is a lagging indicator. The metaverse could help with the company’s demographic crisis, if it encourages young people to strap on their Oculus headsets and hang out in Horizon — Facebook’s social V R app — instead of watching TikTok videos.

Another problem metav­erse strategy could address is platform risk. For years, Zuckerberg has been irked that because Facebook’s mobile apps run on iOS and Android, its success is highly dependent on Apple and Google. And if smartphones remain the dominant way that people interact onlin­e, Facebook will never truly control its own destiny. A metaverse strategy could finally get Facebook out from under Apple’s and Google’s thumbs. 

The third problem is regulatory risk. Facebook is not on the verge of being broken up but regulators are making enough noise about restricting its growth that it makes sense to place bets in some areas, like VR and AR, that are less likely to be regulated any time soon.  

The fourth problem, of course, is the reputational damage Facebook has sust­ained as a result of its many missteps and scandals over the years. Building the me­taverse won’t solve any of these problems overnight. It probably won’t solve them at all and could, in fact, invite new kinds of scrutiny. But it would be wrong to write Facebook’s metaverse off as just a marketing gimmick, or a strategic ploy meant to give the company more leverage over its rivals. Regardless, this isn’t a vanity stunt for Zuckerberg. 

In the metaverse, he has found what may be an escape hatch — a way to eject himself from Facebook’s messy, troubled present and break ground on a new, untainted frontier.

Meta’s developing competitor to Apple Watch
 

Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, is develo­ping a smartwatch with a front-facing camera and rounded screen, according to an image of the device found inside one of the tech giant’s iPhone apps. The photo shows a watch with a screen and casing that’s slightly curved at the edges. The front-facing camera — similar to what you’d see on a smartphone — appears at the bottom of the display, and there’s a control button for the watch on the right side. (Bloomberg)