It was FOMO. They had no vision, they had no plan, it was clear that it was only a thing because it was a buzzword at the time. Just like every other company stuffing crypto-adjacent things everywhere. It might have been a bet, but it was obvious that it was a really terrible one.
> Just like every other company
What other companies (besides Apple and a few startups that were specifically in the metaverse space) went in on the metaverse?
I think this was very much unlike AI and crypto, where everybody wanted a piece of the pie. Meta seemed a lot more invested in this than most of the other tech players, which makes FOMO an unlikely explanation to me.