I think in a room with enough sycophants one could be made to believe in the vision of the Metaverse being the answer to Facebooks current problems;
- Lack of relevance on the big blue site.
- Huge slide in ad revenue.
- Expensive acquisition of Oculus with not much revenue to show for it. $2bn is not a bet-the-company amount of money for Facebook, but it is something, and that $2bn spent on Oculus is op cost taken from somewhere else.
- Reduction in moats for FB, Web shifted to mobile, FB tried bets on mobile + gaming, but those moats have receded.
I imagine Mark wanted something that could increase ad spend, new revenue stream (increase revenue from micro transactions, digital asset ownership) and something to give them some platform strength to shore up their future.
If you look around there is no other technology that is offering itself as a platform to own apart from the meta verse.
Now, I absolutely do not think this bet will pay off - but I can see how he would think it would.
- Lack of relevance on the big blue site.
- Huge slide in ad revenue.
- Expensive acquisition of Oculus with not much revenue to show for it. $2bn is not a bet-the-company amount of money for Facebook, but it is something, and that $2bn spent on Oculus is op cost taken from somewhere else.
- Reduction in moats for FB, Web shifted to mobile, FB tried bets on mobile + gaming, but those moats have receded.
I imagine Mark wanted something that could increase ad spend, new revenue stream (increase revenue from micro transactions, digital asset ownership) and something to give them some platform strength to shore up their future.
If you look around there is no other technology that is offering itself as a platform to own apart from the meta verse.
Now, I absolutely do not think this bet will pay off - but I can see how he would think it would.