In October 2021, Facebook became Meta. The renaming was symbolic in nature: In the future, the company's focus should no longer be on the social network, but on a new digital reality, the metaverse. But the 3D incarnation of the internet is still a rather sparsely populated niche - and according to a Statista forecast, it's likely to stay that way for the time being.
The company's stock market performance also shows how bad things are for Zuckerberg's Meta vision. According to CompaniesMarketCap.com, Meta Platforms was worth around $922 billion at the end of 2021, but is currently worth around $272 billion, a shocking 70-percent decline in less than 12 months. Why isn't the brave new virtual world working? No discernible added value for users. At least that's what some commentators say, predicting that the metaverse in its current form, like the Second Life project before it, is doomed to fail - taking huge levels of Meta investment with it.
