Hacker News Reader

Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad Mark managed to dig Meta out of the hole it was in a few years ago. I remember they were dumping so much money into the metaverse telling everyone it was the future. Seems now they have less of a focus on that and more of a focus on VR hardware and their AI models, which IMO is a better place for them than where they were.

View on HN

I don't know if you're conflating 'Metaverse' with 'NFTs' or something, but in Meta land it's very much a VR/AR term.

If you're interested in where they're currently focusing their spending and the timelines for return on investment, the recently leaked memo isn't a bad place to start https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-cto-to-staff-leaked-memo-2025-...

I feel like the original messaging was terrible. Everyone thinks "metaverse" == Horizon Worlds, since that was the demo they showed at the time. It was actually supposed to be a blanket term for all post-phone tech that will be integrated into daily life. Including but not limited to AR/VR, all sorts of wearable tech, robotics, AI integration into everything, etc. People walked away from their original presentation assuming they were trying to clone second life in VR (they were, but that was just one random project they demoed).

I don't know why people are so focused on the amount they're spending on VR/AR. It's a tenth of their revenue, a quarter of their profit. They spent more on stock buybacks. As far as I'm concerned all the tech companies that are printing money should be spending like this on specific technologies they believe in, instead of stock buybacks. E.g. Google ought to have gone all in on Waymo instead of seeking outside investment.

It's called diversification

Stock buybacks have no cost to investors. It's just returning cash -- not a "spend." Comparing it to actual costs is nonsensical.

I do appreciate the big swing and the R& D is quite cool.

The Quest is a marvel and they seem to be making real gains towards a mythical hands-free AR glasses experience.

I was also very excited to see a big tech company moved towards premium hardware and premium software.

Sadly I fear a return to freemium, now AI generated, and soon to be advertisement filled slop. Meta is still Meta but hopefully their goals keep them on a better path.

> Mark managed to dig Meta out of the hole

He himself put Meta in that hole, found out he couldn’t manifest better hardware out of the magical money hat, and finally gave up on the idea, firing a whole bunch of engineers in the process.

They're still dumping roughly the same amount of money into the Metaverse hole as they were in 2022 ($4-5B/quarter), investors have just warmed up to it (and spending growth slowed down).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com