RIP the metaverse
Meta seems to be winding down its metaverse ambitions. We took a look back at what the company was going for.
Today Meta confirmed that it’s laying off more than 1,000 people in its Reality Labs division — the latest in a series of nails in the coffin for the company’s virtual reality and metaverse ambitions as it pivots to AI.
Considering the company changed its name from Facebook to Meta in 2021 to reflect its new goals, we thought we’d take a look back at what exactly the company and its CEO were going for way back when, and what’s happened since. (If Mark Zuckerberg happens to be reading this, perhaps he should consider renaming the company once again to something more like Met.ai.)
“In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today,” Zuckerberg wrote in the heady days of 2021.
“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up.”
Fast-forward a few years and... that hasn’t happened. Instead, the company is talking about AI a lot, like it once raved about the metaverse.
“It seems clear that in the coming years, AI will improve all our existing systems and enable the creation and discovery of new things that aren’t imaginable today,” Zuckerberg wrote in a mini manifesto this summer. “In some ways this will be a new era for humanity.”
And the company is now putting its money where the metaverse isn’t, as Zuckerberg warns that the dangers of not investing enough in AI outweigh the risks of investing too much.
The company is, however, continuing with its augmented reality glasses, but now instead of upselling their metaverse capabilities, Meta now emphasizes that they are “powered by AI” and how they help people navigate the real world.
Looking back at the metaverse
Here are some of the key milestones in the metaverse’s troubled history:
October 28, 2021 - Founder’s letter announcing the metaverse is the “next chapter” for the company, saying it “will touch every product we build.” Announces a rebranding as Meta.
February 17, 2022 - Meta says 10,000 worlds have been created in Horizon Worlds and it has 300,000 users.
May 18, 2022 - Calling for an open and interoperable metaverse, Meta President Nick Clegg says that “the global metaverse economy could be worth more than $3 trillion globally in a decade.”
June 22, 2022 - Meta rolls out expanded monetization for metaverse creators, including NFTs, which the company says are “essential for the metaverse.”
August 16, 2022 - In a Facebook post announcing Horizon Worlds’ release in France and Spain, Zuckerberg posts an infamous screenshot of his cartoonish avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower, which is widely panned.
August 19, 2022 - Zuckerberg acknowledges previous avatar was “pretty basic” and shares a more detailed avatar.
October 11, 2022 - Zuckerberg shows a video of Horizon Worlds avatars with legs, but it was a motion capture-generated “preview.”
October 15, 2022 - The Wall Street Journal reports on internal Meta documents that show fewer than 200,000 monthly active users, with most users not returning after a month. According to the documents, only 9% of worlds built by creators ever saw at least 50 users, while most were never visited at all.
August 29, 2023 - Horizon Worlds avatars get legs.
September 15, 2023 - Meta brings Horizon Worlds to mobile.
September 26, 2024 - Meta discontinues the Meta Quest Pro headset after lowering the price a year earlier.
December 4, 2025 - Bloomberg reports that Meta is planning to slash metaverse and VR spending by up to 30%.
January 13, 2026 - Meta announces deep cuts to Reality Labs employees working on Horizon Worlds and the metaverse, but will “double down on bringing the best Horizon experiences and AI creator tools to mobile.”
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