Zuckerberg’s unlovable metaverse shares payment policy flaws

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has received a lot of flak in the year since he announced the company’s rebranding, saying, “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first. , not Facebook first”.

He then added, “I hope people get to know about the Meta brand and the future we represent.”

What was the big deal that arose when a virtual reality (VR) “selfie” described as having “soulless” eyes and 90s graphics was so despised it practically broke the internet on the 17th august.

See also: In Horizon Worlds, the Emperor has no legs

Yet few things were as stark as the news on Friday (October 7) which, in a leaked September memo to the Financial Times, Vishal Shah, Meta’s Vice President of Metaverse, admitted that Horizon Worlds’ Metaverse Lite was so plagued by bugs and stability issues that even the company’s own employees didn’t want to use it – let alone the developers it needs to attract to create real content.

“If we don’t like it, how can we expect our users to like it? Shah reportedly asked, announcing a “quality lockdown” that puts building everything new on hold while he masters the basics.

It’s a problem that doesn’t end with poor graphics, legless avatars and a company that an anonymous employee of Meta Metaverse told the FT, where “a lot of people internally… never put of [virtual reality] helmet.”

Pay the Piper

In April, Meta announced to much fanfare, at least in the payment and content creation spaces, that it was rolling out a payment tool that would siphon off just under half – 47.5% to be precise – of revenue that content creators report. .

Read more: Meta opens its Metaverse platform to payments and it’s not cheap

“I think creator monetization is really important because you all need to be able to support yourself and earn a good living building these amazing experiences that people can have,” Zuckerberg said on a panel. Horizon Worlds avatar at the time.

Which shows an essential lack of not only focus, but also understanding of what a metaverse is – at least in the version that Meta is banking on.

Facebook and social media giant Instagram are places users come to socialize, contributing their own content to fill the platforms with reasons for their friends to hang out — and, along the way, view ads.

A metaverse is a place where people go to be more proactively and interactively entertained with content developed by others who intend to profit from it. Whether that comes in the form of sales, fees, or eyeballs doesn’t matter.

Certainly, many people will develop metaverse content for fun – or for their friends. And by the same token, many creators and influencers make a living on Facebook and Instagram, bringing with them eyeballs for those ads.

If you build it…

But in a metaverse, people want to play entertaining games, attend concerts, view artwork, and buy virtual (and possibly real) goods and services. And watch the ads, to be fair. Or so the sales pitch goes.

In his April payout pitch, Zuckerberg said he thinks what sells in a metaverse “would end up looking a little different than what you’d expect from the physical world.” So it takes a lot of experimentation and creativity on the part of the people who build the worlds and build those experiences.

Which means they need a lot more infrastructure support than people posting photos. And Meta hasn’t shown it can do it even as well as blockchain-based startups like Decentraland and The Sandbox, let alone long-existing virtual worlds like Roblox and Second Life.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg announced a hiring freeze, as the company’s revenue plummeted and the stock price slumped as it “continues to have its clock cleaned by TikTok”, a LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield told the FT.

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