Meta CEO Mark Zuckerber shows his metaverse
After spending billions of dollars to develop a virtual reality world (Horizon Worlds), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg approached the stage to exhibit his metaverse.
While full-body avatar improvements aren’t planned until 2023, Zuckerberg can be seen leaping around in the video, offering everyone an early glimpse at the technology. Or did he? “To provide this peek of what’s to come, the part featured animations developed using motion capture,” explains Meta in a follow-up statement. Motion capture is the process of recording a person’s motions in real time and converting them into computer-animated visuals utilizing sensors. As a result, the legs shown by Zuckerberg’s avatar in the video demo may be more realistic than legs in the metaverse.
The corporation has had an interesting year since rebranding from Facebook last year. One year and billions of dollars later, its so-called metaverse appears to be years away, if at all. And the corporation formerly known as Facebook remains a social media business — one that is under more financial strain than it was when the name change was announced.
Shareholder urged the company
In an open letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a shareholder described the tech giant’s investment in the Metaverse as “super-sized and terrifying.” The shareholder urged the company to scale back its investment in the Metaverse and its related technology arm, citing a significant drop in the company’s stock price over the last 18 months.
To be fair, the whole tech industry has taken a battering this year, but Meta’s stock has fallen 75% from a year ago, compared to the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 31% drop over the same period. The collapse of Meta results in a staggering loss of $700 billion in market value.
Meta is facing a double whammy in terms of advertising. Advertisers are cutting down on spending as the economy slows, citing a “uncertain and turbulent socioeconomic picture” for commercials. The corporation is also concerned about the impact of Apple’s privacy rules on apps that run on its devices. This update allows users to request that applications not monitor them, which Facebook estimates will cost them $10 billion this year.