Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta/Facebook empire have been having a bad year, to say the least. Not only has the company’s stock been on a downward spiral, losing billions in value, but now the New York Times has reported that Meta/Facebook can’t even get their own employees to use their hardware devices.
One problem, reported the New York Times, was when the company wanted employees to take part in a virtual meeting. Unfortunately for Meta/Facebook, many of its staffers simply did not own the company’s VR headsets. So they were told that they needed to rush out and buy them.
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“The pressures Meta’s business is facing in 2022 are acute, significant and not metaverse-related,” Matthew Ball, an investor and metaverse expert whose advice Mr. Zuckerberg has sought, told the New York Times. “And there is a risk that almost everything Mark has outlined about the metaverse is right, except the timing is farther out than he imagined.”
Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, dismissed criticisms as nothing but cynicism. “Being a cynic about new and innovative technology is easy,” he said. “Actually building it is a lot harder — but that’s what we’re doing because we believe the metaverse is the future of computing.”
Another problem for Meta/Facebook is the failure of the company’s virtual-reality game Horizon Worlds to even get off the ground. It has reportedly been shelved for now.
All this bad news comes at just the wrong time for Meta/Facebook. On Tuesday the company will unveil its new high-end VR headset during its annual Meta Connect developer event. Mark Zuckerberg, of course, will give the keynote address when the event opens at 1 PM Eastern Time in the U.S.
The Meta Connect conference will be live streamed and, of course, people will need to use VR headsets to get the full experience. Meta/Facebook says that participants will get to learn from Mark Zuckerberg, expert developers and creators. Discover how a social metaverse is additive to physical experiences helping us all connect in deeper, more meaningful ways.
