article: Rice Bibimbap
Recently, media reported that the Meta meta-universe platform "Horizon Worlds" created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has less than 200,000 users worldwide, and its online users are even worse than the online virtual world "Second Life" launched in 2003.
is once one of the most valuable companies in the world, and is listed as the five major information technology companies in the United States, along with Amazon , Apple , Microsoft and Alphabet (parent company of Google ). Facebook is now far behind by others. The cause and effect of all this comes from this concept called "Metaverse" (metaverse).
Facebook has been renamed, but it has not been completely changed
, a genius who gradually abandons human emotions as he grows older and looks more and more like AI robots. I don’t know what kind of inspiration has been received in the metaverse, but from the moment Zuckerberg decided to change the way human social interactions, his cyber has never been reduced. But no matter what, his metaverse plan started to work under the gaze of countless netizens.
The first thing that changed was its company's name. The company's main business and revenue came from its social platform "Facebook", but after the name change incident, Facebook was downgraded to become a business brand under the Meta Group and no longer exists as a company's logo. Zuckerburke once revealed to reporters in an interview: In the next few years, we will transform from a social company to a meta-universe company. In this way, both business logic and brand tone will undergo earth-shaking changes.
But in contrast, the company's situation was not very optimistic during the period after changing its name Meta. In February 2022, Meta reported revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, with its profit falling far exceeding expectations, and revenue growth is expected to stagnate.
At the same time, the report also pointed out that the measures taken by Apple to protect user privacy resulted in the fourth quarter's advertising revenue loss of approximately US$10 billion. Zuckerberg also said at a subsequent employee conference that "due to the rise of short video applications such as TikTok, social networks are undergoing earth-shaking changes, and this competition will surely impact the old social platforms." After that, due to the decline in stock prices, Meta's market value evaporated by US$230 billion (about RMB 1.6 trillion). However, in addition to the impact of short videos, Meta's market layout is somewhat incomprehensible.
's early deployment laid out what was the Meta
Although the name change occurred in October 2021, Zuckerberg had already started the layout as early as 2014. At that time, they wanted to use Oculus's technology to open up a new track based on the acquisition of virtual reality headset maker Oculus, which not only opened up use scenarios in the fields of gaming, life, education, medical care, etc., but also wanted to create a new "future". But it was not until a document sent to Facebook by Oculus executive Jason Rubin in 2018 that made everyone realize that people are not ready for the arrival of meta-universe .
In the file, Rubin said that Facebook has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to promote the concept of the metaverse, and Oculus has also increased the number of monthly active players to 250,000 with this momentum, but the Oculus VR device has not received much attention from non-core players, which has also made the subsequent promotion of VR technology an extremely difficult thing.
Then Rubin suggested in the file that Facebook creates a large game development team to contribute to the metaverse. He said that the current metaverse is empty and boring, and it has no shining points that can attract users to come here to kill time. For this purpose, Facebook should start building a meta-universe world that can subvert others' perceptions. Although it is extraordinary and challenging, it must be "terrible" to succeed. It has to be ambitious and make our engineers fear what they are going to face.If the project can go smoothly, 100 million virtual users will bring the value of having 1 billion users in real life.
The failed commercial plans one after another, where will Meta go from
Although Zuckerberg had the idea of building a meta universe in his mind at that time, he didn't know whether this 50-page file had a role in fueling the fire. In short, after that, Facebook's strategy became radical.
In 2019, Facebook established Libra Networks to develop its own cryptocurrency, and at the beginning of its establishment, it received support from financial companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Uber, etc. However, in the subsequent implementation, it was strongly opposed by the central bank and the regulatory mechanism. The French Minister of Finance expressed his concerns about Libra's violation of user privacy, money laundering and "terrorist" financing; the President of Bank of England also believed that "anything that works in this world needs to be systematic and must comply with the highest standards of regulation"; the Executive Vice President of the European Commission expressed his concerns about " digital currency , which may disrupt financial and monetary stability" at the closing meeting of digital finance outreach in 2020. Ultimately, EU , the United States and government regulators curbed the project on the grounds of "sovereignty over currency, financial stability, privacy and antitrust."
Since your own digital currency cannot be implemented, it is better to focus on building the meta-universe world. After all, after being renamed Meta, Zuckerberg has already planned to all his wealth. A year after the digital currency project was suspended, a meta-universe social platform called "Horizon Worlds" opened tests. The official described "Horizon Worlds" as "a fun and warm virtual reality world where players can create their own communities and make friends with people around the world."
However, what was out of the test was not the game quality and realistic level of "Horizon Worlds", but news reports about sexual harassment: a female tester said that a stranger attempted to "touch" the body of his virtual character in a public square. Then netizens started a crazy discussion about "whether there is sexual harassment in the virtual world", completely ignoring the Horizon Worlds, which attempted to bring everyone's attention back to themselves.
As the initiator of the project, Zuckerberg did not fail to make efforts to promote the game, but the response was "far beyond" his imagination. On August 16, to celebrate the launch of "Horizon Worlds" in Spain and France, Zuckerberg happily posted a selfie on Facebook of himself standing on virtual Eiffel Tower and Sagrada Familia , but this selfie attracted the ridicule of many netizens.
They believe that this virtual platform, which cost $10 billion, is far inferior to the old games they used to be. What's more, some people said that this was actually a conspiracy of Meta. In fact, they are studying AI technology, and releasing messages is just to confuse competitors. But no matter what, a recent internal document reveals the dilemma of "Horizon Worlds" having less than 200,000 users on the entire platform. It seems that the virtual social platform "Horizon Worlds" does not have the ability to become the "core of the meta-universe vision."
The last life-saving straw?
Seeing that the desire to cut players' leeks failed, Meta had to turn her attention to the social animals. On October 12, Meta announced its latest headset device Meta Quest Pro at the developer conference. Meta CEO Zuckerberg said that Quest Pro is a product created for "a professional work scenario", and its price of $1,499 is indeed quite "professional". You should know that the price after the increase in the previous generation Quest 2 was only $399. So on the day the new headset was released, Meta's stock price fell 3.92%, which became another joke in Meta's history.
However, another message at the press conference, "Announcement of the strategic cooperation between Meta and Microsoft, " has injected a glimmer of vitality into this illusory meta-universe plan.Microsoft said that as the cooperation deepens, Microsoft's resources will slowly be integrated into the virtual world of Meta. Soon, players will be able to operate commonly used work software such as Word and Excel in the virtual world through Meta Quest, and can also play Xbox games in their spare time. However, the cooperation between the two has just begun, and everything is still unknown.
Conclusion
Although Meta has repeatedly failed in expanding the meta-universe market, it can still hold on for a while with its social platforms Facebook, Ins and other projects, while burning $27 billion for the meta-universe, it can be imagined how huge it is when it is booming. Although I personally do not like the so-called "metauniverse", Zuckerberg is really looking forward to some "shocking" products he can make. After all, it is not common for people who can "play" their lives for their dreams now.
