{"id":95880,"date":"2022-10-13T13:08:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wall-street-questions-metas-desperate-metaverse-push\/"},"modified":"2022-10-13T13:08:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:08:57","slug":"wall-street-questions-metas-desperate-metaverse-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wall-street-questions-metas-desperate-metaverse-push\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street Questions Meta&#8217;s &#8216;Desperate&#8217; Metaverse Push"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul class=\"summary-list\">\n<li>Mark Zuckerberg made another pitch for his metaverse this week, failing to placate investors.<\/li>\n<li>One analyst called it a &#8220;desperate&#8221; and likely doomed attempt by the company to reinvent itself.<\/li>\n<li>Meta&#8217;s stock went down to its lowest price since late 2018 after the event.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Investors were not impressed by Meta&#8217;s latest product reveals, which included, among other things, the launch of avatar legs \u2014 showing that the company still has a ways to go before investors feel better about its costly push into building the metaverse.<\/p>\n<p>The company&#8217;s annual developer conference Connect this week focused on the metaverse, envisioned by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as an immersive digital world that will displace the iteration of the internet led by smartphones and personal computers.  But Neil Campling, an analyst who is the head of research at Mirabaud, summed it up in one word: &#8220;desperate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No wonder investors are in despair,&#8221; he added.  Shares of Meta, which last year changed its name from Facebook, dropped again Wednesday to $127, their lowest price since late 2018.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Captain Zuckerberg continues to steer the Meta ship towards an unknown path called the Metaverse and is determined to splurge billions and billions of dollars in an endeavor to reinvent itself,&#8221; Campling said.<\/p>\n<p>Campling estimated that Meta would spend about $15 billion this year on the metaverse.  That&#8217;s in addition to the $10 billion it lost last year.  He was not impressed by the various advances Meta showed off at Connect, like an upgraded Quest Pro headset, more expressive and photo realistic avatars (unavailable) and a version of avatars with legs (available sometime next year).  Avatars currently come only from the torso up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, the greatest development of burning $10 billion of cash flow on this endeavor is legs?&#8221;  Camping asked.  &#8220;Fiscal discipline has become the focus of most corporations in 2022 \u2014 but Meta seems determined to follow its own risky path.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even John Carmack, the former chief technology officer of Oculus who advises Meta on the metaverse and its headsets and is a booster of virtual-reality technology, acknowledged being &#8220;grumpy&#8221; during a talk at Connect about the company&#8217;s rate of progress.  He appeared throughout his session as an avatar, mostly in a version that is available to users.  It looked much less refined than the prerecorded version displayed by Zuckerberg and other executives during the conference.<\/p>\n<p>Carmack noted, too, continued frustration around the reliability of the company&#8217;s Quest 2 headsets.  He said that a Meta employee posted internally of the difficulty using a headset and that it took 20 minutes to figure out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It pains me to hear people say that they don&#8217;t even get their headset out to show off at the company because they know it&#8217;s going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can make it do something cool,&#8221; Carmack said.  &#8220;VR should be a delight to demo for your friends.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Carmack noted that these products had made improvements in graphics and latency issues.  And he said the Quest Pro, while much more expensive than Quest 2, was &#8220;a very fine piece of engineering.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some on Wall Street are also willing to give Meta more of a chance to prove itself, despite the costs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If they find a real product market fit and it takes off, no one will remember how they got there,&#8221; said Mark Shmulik, a managing director and senior analyst at Bernstein.  &#8220;If they become the company in this space that everyone has to work with, the size of the business could be massive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, it&#8217;s a long way from certain that Meta&#8217;s bet will be a success.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we have some progress then,&#8221; Shmulik said, &#8220;it&#8217;ll give them another year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Are you a Meta employee or someone with insight to share?  Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app <\/em><em>Signal<\/em><em>  at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali.  Reach out using a non-work device.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Zuckerberg made another pitch for his metaverse this week, failing to placate investors. One analyst called it a &#8220;desperate&#8221; and likely doomed attempt by the company to reinvent itself. Meta&#8217;s stock went down to its lowest price since late 2018 after the event. Investors were not impressed by Meta&#8217;s latest product reveals, which included, &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wall-street-questions-metas-desperate-metaverse-push\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Wall Street Questions Meta&#8217;s &#8216;Desperate&#8217; Metaverse Push<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":94928,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/zuckerberg-set-expectations-for-meta-quest-pro-at-rock-bottom\/","url_meta":{"origin":95880,"position":0},"title":"Zuckerberg set expectations for Meta Quest Pro at rock bottom","date":"October 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., demonstrates the Meta Quest Pro during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesCritics and tech pundits weren't the only people disillusioned by Meta's new $1,500 virtual reality headset.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":96515,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-metaverse-has-had-a-very-bad-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":95880,"position":1},"title":"The Metaverse Has Had a Very Bad Week","date":"October 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been nearly a year since Facebook rebranded itself to Metaand founder Mark Zuckerberg and the company are facing serious doubts from the public, media, and some of their own employees about the future of their focus on the Metaverse. just yesterday, Meta officially revealed its new Meta Quest Pro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":94288,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/mark-zuckerbergs-metaverse-finally-will-have-legs\/","url_meta":{"origin":95880,"position":2},"title":"Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s metaverse finally will have legs","date":"October 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company will be taking a major step to making its virtual reality metaverse avatars more lifelike: by giving them legs. Since Zuckerberg unveiled his grand metaverse ambitions nearly a year ago \u2014 betting his company's future on the idea that the next era of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/634754eec03fe400197b5381?width=1200&format=jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}