The Wall Street Journal (paywall) tells us Meta is pivoting to artificial intelligence and moving away from its metaverse ambitions.
Yes, there was excitement when Meta changed their name in late 2021, almost as excitement as we got with British Petroleum’s 2000 greenwashing attempt, in which they changed their logo to a happy yellow-green sunburst to look like they cared about the environment.
But adoption was slow, and for some reason people in the metaverse still have no legs, a metaphor so obvious one suspects a rogue engineer cooked it up on purpose. Excitement has cooled, with big-name partners like Disney and Microsoft shuttering their metaverse divisions. AI, in the meantime, seems to promise better returns. They quote venture capitalist Matthew Ball: “It is obvious that hype around the metaverse has receded.”
