In defence of Mark and his metaverse
Here outgoing Private Media CEO Will Hayward finds himself in the awkward position of going in to bat for Mark Zuckerberg’s much-maligned metaverse investment.
Metafail: But worth a shot all the same
A useful mental exercise: whenever there is strong consensus for or against something, it might be overdone.
AI will change the world (probably, but perhaps not as much as people think). TV is dead (maybe not as popular as it once was, but still hugely important). Maybe this applies to the near-universal mockery of Meta’s metaverse pivot — the initiative Zuckerberg considered so central to his company’s future that he renamed Facebook after it.
The criticism is easy to make:
- The early demos looked ridiculous (floating heads and shoulders)
- People clearly don’t want to spend their time with colossal devices strapped to their faces
- Even if they did, that is probably something we want to resist (there is good evidence that face to face time is better for mental health than virtual time together)
- In spite of extremely low user adoption, Zuckerberg continued to wildly over-invest in what looked like a pet project, spending $80Bn over the last few years on the Metaverse
But there are a few reasons why that consensus view might be overstated.
