Facebook Meta owner opens first physical store to bet on metaverse

Meta said on April 25 that it is opening its latest first physical retail space to transform itself from a social media platform into a hardware giant inventing the “metaverse”.

At this Meta Store, customers will be able to test out Meta’s growing line of smart hardware devices including the Quest 2 virtual reality headset, Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and the Portal video calling device. The company will also sell some virtual devices directly in the store. This is the latest development in Meta’s long-term plan to build an immersive virtual world they call the metaverse.

Originally, Meta has spent billions of dollars on its Virtual Reality Lab, the division tasked with developing virtual and augmented reality hardware and software, to create the technology that underpins Metaverse. The company envisions that users will eventually want to use a digital avatar (avatar) to work with colleagues in a virtual board room, attend digital events with friends, and shop in stores. Virtual goods are accessed through the company’s augmented and virtual reality support services.

“The best way to understand virtual reality is to experience it,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. experience up a big wall for your friends to see”.

The Meta Store, which will open next month, is located near the division’s Virtual Reality Labs headquarters in California.

Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse obsession is driving some Facebook employees crazy

The Facebook founder has little interest in the “metaverse,” current and former employees say. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg shifted focus to building what he sees as the future of the internet, but one employee said: “There’s still no coherent strategy.”

According to several current and former Facebook employees, Mark Zuckerberg has worked so hard in building the metaverse that it is becoming a point of frustration for those who work for him. It’s “the only thing Mark wants to talk about,” according to a former executive-level employee who recently left.

What the hell is the company announcing about the new focus, which is a collection of specialized metaverse teams, and the team tasked with broadcasting the news that “the company has an outstanding metaverse weapon “, this person told Insider for a story that delves into Mark Zuckerberg’s grand strategic pivot and current business struggles.

However, some employees are still confused when it comes to the topic. A current employee said: “Basically Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse pivot is creating disorganization and making a lot of people nervous. People don’t really seem to know what to do, how to do it because Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse pivot still doesn’t have a strict strategy, it’s just patchwork.”

A spokesman said the company Meta is “going through a transformation and we are doing our best”.

Facebook changed its company name to Meta in October 2021 in an effort to shift its brand from a business focused on the controversial social network to a company on the verge of innovating the way people communicate.

The name change comes after a political crisis after a whistleblower turned over piles of internal documents to Congress and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, prompting lawmakers and supporters alike. The household called on the tech giant to reform its way of doing business. Critics say the documents reveal the company made design and policy decisions that exacerbated mental health problems in some younger users, amplifying mainstream polarization treat and leave areas vulnerable to harmful content.

But promoting the metaverse that was supposed to save the company from past controversies is now proving problematic in a number of ways. Meta also sees the investment in hardware as an opportunity to diversify its business model at a time when it faces several threats in the market including new rules due to Apple imposed to limit iPhone users’ ability to collect information to target them with advertising campaigns. If Meta sells its own hardware, it won’t have to depend on other companies to get its services into the hands of users.

Last year, the company lost $10 billion on its Reality Labs division, which handles metaverse projects. Meta also intends to spend just as much this year and possibly for many years to come. Zuckerberg has said that the metaverse is a long-term project that won’t be fully developed anytime soon for a decade or more.

Besides, insiders and investors fear that Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse axis is an identity crisis from which the social media company will not be able to recover.

Even Facebook is fighting to grow its user base at a time when newer social media apps like Snapchat and TikTok are growing in popularity, especially among young people. In February 2022, Facebook reported that for the first time in its 18-year history, the platform was losing daily users, dropping by about half a million users in the last three months of 2021.