So long Metaverse, we hardly knew ye

Just three years old, the fate of the once-buzzy Metaverse has been sealed

WITH THE BENEFIT of hindsight, we can admit that early 2022 was a very unusual time. Remember NFTs? And remember all the hullabaloo over an odd Facebook spinoff called the Metaverse?

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Here at Worklife HQ, we do remember those weird times. In one of our early editions of this newsletter (January 2022), we covered the launch of the Metaverse and the frothy, sort-of-real real estate market that existed in there. “Does it sound insane? Maybe. But it’s certainly happening,” we wrote at the time.

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The Metaverse never really caught on, though, proving to be one of big tech’s big flops. And last week, Mark Zuckerberg appeared to officially put the last meta-nail in the meta-coffin, after a Bloomberg News report that Zuck was “expected to meaningfully cut resources for building the so-called metaverse,” with suggestions the budget may be trimmed by as much as 30 per cent.

There are few tears being shed in the Metaverse wake, it seems. “The thing never made much sense, even when Zuck dramatically declared the metaverse would be the successor of the mobile internet,” wrote CNN Business’ Allison Morrow. “The entire project is, to say the least, a far cry from the vast digital idyll of Zuck’s pandemic-era fever dream, and it’s getting shoved to the back of the closet like so many well-intentioned Covid projects.”

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“Smart move, just late,” added Huber Research Partners analyst Craig Huber, speaking to Reuters. “This seems a major shift to align costs with a revenue outlook that surely is not as prosperous as management thought years ago.”

So, we’re not shedding any tears here, either, even the Metaverse’s loftiest promises — Zoom calls around a virtual boardroom table, the Metaverse cocktail hour — were fun to think about. Kieran Delamont