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For Facebook, It’s Metaverse Or Bust

Zuckerberg is diverting billions of dollars into the metaverse, even as Facebook’s core business begins to sour. Wall Street is selling and employees are skeptical. Is it too late to turn back?

Mark Zuckerberg
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Image
Alex Kantrowitz
February 4, 2022

After Meta (Facebook) missed on earnings, lost some users, and dropped more than $200 billion in market cap this week, analysts and journalists focused on the pivot. The company had poured billions into Reality Labs—its division working to combine virtual reality, augmented reality, and 2D screens into a vague concept called the “metaverse”—and that had come at a cost. “Meta spent $10 billion on the metaverse in 2021,” The New York Times wrote, “dragging down profit.”