Why Meta’s doubling down on VR and addressing the hurdles holding back the Metaverse.
Mark Zuckerberg’s persistence with the Metaverse is understandable. With a crackdown on permissions, Meta does not have the same grip on targeted ads it once enjoyed. The outcome which shocks investors every quarter and tanks its share price cannot be fixed by incremental improvements.
Despite dominating the social media space, they are still limited by the device their apps run on – devices today controlled by Apple and Google.
Meta realized this and – with the acquisition of Oculus in 2014 – started betting on controlling the next generation of devices. For Meta, if they’re a front runner in VR when it takes off, they get to set the rules. They get to serve personalized ads targeted better than ever, with eye movement and facial expression feedback on each impression.
To get there, the biggest obstacle the Metaverse faces is ironically also Facebook’s strongest moat. Platforms – social media, entertainment or ecommerce – require a critical mass of users to take off.
Content creators are not keen on a place without users, and visitors won’t actively use a platform without meaningful content or value. The internet is littered with the ruins of products which couldn’t get over that hurdle.
History may not repeat, but it does often rhyme
Fortunately for Meta, if they want users to adopt the next big thing, they have a handy case study of how people adapted to adopt the current big thing.
Look through the history of the smartphone. Steve Jobs’ 2007 iPhone launch did not happen in a vacuum. Remember the feature phone? Or the Blackberry? If we were to skip those steps, go back two decades and put an iPhone 14 in the market, barring its camera, the iPhone 14 would not appeal to the average user. I’ll let Stanley and Phyllis from the Office explain:
Switch their Blackberry for an iPhone or any amazing tech you can’t live without today and their reaction would likely have been similar.
The hottest piece of tech from 2022 would not strike a chord with people in 2002. Mass consumer products get successful when they meet current needs in a easier, more accessible way. Blackberry improved upon feature phones of the past by solving a problem better. iPhone would then go on to do that and then some more.
Successful products don’t build for the future. They build the future by improving the lives of their customers in the present. The next big thing doesn’t turn up overnight. It never has. It’s only in retrospect – with the benefit of hindsight – that we recognize them as such.
For consumers today, what VR is may be fascinating but its why is not compelling. Not yet anyway. Until Meta gives people a why – the value VR adoption brings them – the vision of Metaverse, no matter how alluring, will not quite be reality.
There lies the challenge for Meta. Very few teams can dream of shaping human behavior at this scale. Realizing that dream however is as much about technology as it’s about behavioral science.
I write about the latest trends in tech and the latest business news, and share curated product management content from around the web. Subscribe to receive an email newsletter with these updates!