Mark Zuckerbucks Admits He F*#ked Up

Even the most financial illiterate person could have told you that Mark Zuckerberg'a metaverse pursuit was a bad move to go all-in on.

Mark Zuckerberg just announced 11,000 Meta employees will be laid off, after admitting he got it wrong. And, while I agree he did get it wrong, tech stocks are down across the board. Meta was just making bolder and bigger moves, so from an investment perspective it's more of a risk.

Blaming economic conditions, aggressive expansion of the company and a naive outlook on pandemic-level online growth continuing, Mark finally understands that even dreams aren't immune to a looming recession.

As we saw recently with Twitter laying off 50% of its workforce (then subsequently begging many to come back), no matter how well known or big you are, you're not immune to an economic downturn.

Meta is down 75% on the stock market, but after the news of lay offs were announced, the value went up 7%. Because investors love nothing more than news of a company reducing its expenditure by firing people. Or, perhaps it's the hope that Mark Zuckerberg is finally abandoning his pursuit of an idea realistically a decade or more away?

Considering the approach Mark Zuckerberg was taking to pursuing the metaverse concept was to pour money into a fire and watch it burn, willing to haemorrhage large amounts of it to try and realise it, his options have been narrowed.

Even when the times were good, the throw cash at a wall and see what sticks strategy was always going to be a financial write off. It's just the buffers that Meta had to do this previously were a lot larger. And Mark has lost over $150b of his personal fortune. Once again, every other billionaire is in the same boat.

It raises the bigger question, what is the metaverse, really? We've seen numerous blockchain projects embrace it in the form of virtual worlds and currencies, we've seen others also attempt to launch their own virtual real estate and more.

The fact ultimately you need some form of virtual reality headset to access the metaverse in its intended form is a huge risk. People can barely afford to eat and pay rent/electricity at the moment. How are they going to afford a VR header?

And even in metaverse concepts where it's less about physical immersion and more about the digital world concept, it always comes down to money. The metaverse in its first instance doesn't seem to be free. Who knows when we'll get the metaverse we've been promised with virtual worlds, hangouts and billboard advertising to subsidise the server costs?