It’s looking more and more like Meta’s CEO is—and perhaps always was—a one-trick pony. Facebook may very well have been a stroke of unbelievable timing and luck. The idea itself wasn’t particularly genius: use the web to help people find friends and stay connected across temporal and spatial distances. The initial coding, from a foundational standpoint, wasn’t considered especially difficult either. But as the network effect took hold and users multiplied, the best and brightest naturally jumped on board, and there was nothing else like it at the time of its ascent. It eventually became a money-printing machine.
Then Meta acquired Instagram for $1B and WhatsApp for $16B—neither of which were Meta’s own inventions, but rather strategic purchases. Another $2B check was written for Oculus, tied to the cockamamie vision of funneling all waking human activity into Horizon Worlds, their flagship VR platform within the Metaverse. The idea was that people would make friends, attend meetings, and purchase clothes for their avatars and art for their virtual offices.
“Move fast and break things” works with software, but not with VR goggles. The product didn’t sell; it sat on shelves. The human vestibular system isn’t well-suited for VR headsets, and many users experienced motion sickness. Marketed as “the future of human connection,” Horizon Worlds avatars didn’t even have legs. That only further alienated users, so at the 2022 Connect keynote, Meta resorted to motion-capture animation to fake a demo, causing a PR embarrassment. The result: empty worlds, cartoonish avatars, and little interest in strapping a bulky headset to one’s face just to feel disoriented and lose spatial awareness—all contributing to roughly $80 billion in losses.
Meta is littered with failed attempts:
- Facebook Phone
- Facebook Watch (TV)
- Facebook Dating
- Libra
- VR
And if my calculations are correct, Meta’s next major flop may be AI.
When ChatGPT launched in 2022 and reached 1 million users in just five days, Mark Zuckerberg quickly pivoted and trained his death laser on AI, aggressively recruiting talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind. Of course, those costs have to be offset, hence the 8,000 layoffs on Meta’s docket. In yet another acquisition attempt, this time targeting Manus, a Chinese general-purpose AI agent—it appears the Chinese government has said, “not so fast.” The deal was reportedly blocked by China’s National Development and Reform Commission.
Meta has been defended by some in the industry as not merely lucky, but a well-built company. Still, when most of its innovations have either been acquired, late to the game, or outright terrible idea’s…I’m starting to wonder.
