Facebook's name change to Meta was announced by Mark Zuckerberg on Friday a year ago, marking the beginning of a major push towards the metaverse by the company.
There is no doubt that this decision cost his company billions of dollars, and entrepreneurs who rushed into their virtual world to generate real-world revenue could easily be forgiven for freaking out when they found out. Despite this, some people seem not to care.
According to Aaron Sorrels, a 47-year-old professional comedian, she had one of the best experiences of his life when he launched the first virtual comedy club on the leading metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds, last year. This year, it has already lost $ 9.4 billion from its metaverse segment, according to the company's most recent quarterly earnings report released earlier this week.
The Facebook CEO said that even as investor concerns over the lack of progress grow, he expects those losses to continue to increase over time as he continues to expand into the metaverse. There have been reports in the Wall Street Journal that Horizon Worlds has failed to attract and retain users - the company currently has fewer than 200,000 monthly active users, which is less than half the 500,000 goal that Horizon Worlds set for itself.
CNBC said Thursday that Meta's "shocking slump" was due to the company's abandonment from the top 20 US companies based on the valuation, while it recorded a three-quarter consecutive decline in revenue. There was no immediate response from Meta to a CNBC Make It request for clarification.
There is no doubt that these terrible numbers have not dampened the enthusiasm of innovators like Sorrels.