A year on from Meta hyping the metaverse in a dystopian Super Bowl ad, enthusiasm for a virtual future has evaporated and Meta is now more focused on efficiency
Enthusiasm for a virtual future is draining away — and so is investment — Remember when we were all going to ditch our humdrum lives … Tweets: @jimpethokoukis , @mattnavarra , @techwontsaveus , @mrs_wadds , @whatleydude , @fleming77 , @adeladawy , @andrewcarrier , @michael_french , @katebevan , @stuartbruce , @tomffiske , and @whatleydude Tweets: James Pethokoukis / @jimpethokoukis : “That's because you're thinking about it the wrong way. You need to think about the metaverse the same way you think about the internet. It's not one thing. It's everything.” https://www.ft.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : Whatever happened to the metaverse? Enthusiasm for a virtual future is draining away — and so is investment https://www.ft.com/... @techwontsaveus : Meta has “fallen remarkably quiet about its big plan to hire 10,000 people in the EU to work on the metaverse ... They told me: ‘Our expansion in Europe was always a long-term one planned over a number of years.’” https://www.ft.com/... @mrs_wadds : Yeah all those comms posts have aged well. People get so caught up in the shiny new things they forget about barriers to entry (cost) and accessibility. https://twitter.com/... James Whatley / @whatleydude : I had genuinely forgotten about this bit - https://twitter.com/... Jane Fleming / @fleming77 : Reality Labs, the division that makes the Meta Quest headsets, made an operating loss of $13.7bn last year. @Livingstone_S https://twitter.com/... Adel El-Adawy / @adeladawy : Is the metaverse already over, before it ever began? Interesting piece by @jemimajoanna in the @FT, where she observes enthusiasm and investment draining away. https://www.ft.com/... Andrew Carrier / @andrewcarrier : “That brings us to the metaverse's most serious problem: nobody seems to want it.” 👏🏻 Look, I'm just going to say it, I'm in love with @jemimajoanna. https://www.ft.com/... Michael French / @michael_french : “Enthusiasm for a virtual future is draining away”. You don't say! Feels like there have been more books written about the metaverse - and more ‘experts’ about it on LinkedIn - than there are metaverse products or services or hardware. https://www.ft.com/... Kate Bevan / @katebevan : Great piece from @jemimajoanna on how the hype machine has moved on from the metaverse https://www.ft.com/... @stuartbruce : This is the gist of my masterclass on the future of public relations and communications. The ‘metaverse’ might get the buzz and attention, but when Facebook can't even persuade its own people to use it then it ain't happening anytime soon. https://twitter.com/... Tom Ffiske / @tomffiske : A punchy piece from the @FT today, and it raises some good insights. ‘The internet will become more immersive. But this will happen gradually and messily: we are not about to step into a suddenly formed, blockchain-powered virtual world together.’ https://www.ft.com/... James Whatley / @whatleydude : The @FT today: ‘Whatever happened to the metaverse?’ Surely a wake up call to any serious marketing exec still taking pitches from agencies that should know better... 'That brings us to the metaverse's most serious problem: nobody seems to want it' https://www.ft.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta’s virtual-world push was rooted in an internal Oculus plan that argued Facebook needed to own the VR market, as described in Oculus’s earlier case for controlling VR. The company’s current emphasis on efficiency marks a sharper near-term posture for that long-horizon ambition.
The broader commercial case was already uneven: retailers including Nike, Chipotle, and Forever 21 had used Roblox storefronts tied to real-world sales, rather than relying on a single new virtual-world destination.
First-order effects
- Reality Labs faces greater pressure to constrain spending after its reported $13.7bn operating loss, while Meta presents its EU metaverse hiring ambition as a longer-term expansion rather than an active near-term buildout.
- Meta’s metaverse strategy loses the public momentum needed to support rapid adoption of Quest hardware and virtual experiences.
Second-order effects
- Retailers pursuing virtual-world marketing have an incentive to favor established platforms such as Roblox, where campaigns can be connected to existing consumer activity and real-world sales.
- Meta’s efficiency focus raises the bar for metaverse projects seeking internal investment, shifting attention from broad future-world narratives toward demonstrable use and adoption.
Third-order effects
- If weak adoption persists, the metaverse market is likely to develop around narrower commercial and gaming use cases rather than a single, Meta-led successor to today’s internet.
- The earlier need for substantially greater home-network capacity for immersive worlds becomes less urgent until consumer demand justifies that infrastructure investment.
The trend: Metaverse investment is moving from platform-defining ambition toward selective, use-case-led spending as adoption fails to match early expectations.