He spent billions on a platform for which the primary audience (techie people) is not interested because his privacy and data position is a non-starter.

Most big tech like this takes off because techy people buy it and then show their friends. They help them buy and set up their own version of it to start until these companies eventually make it simple enough for non-techies. That’s how the game works.

Zuck made it completely unpalatable for those early adopters and he tied it to Facebook, a platform that young people despise. It was never going anywhere to begin with.

The metaverse is a whole other ball of wax. Thats virtual social environments.

VRChat is thriving. They hit a new 100k concurrent users record over new years.

Apple is also specifically not worrying about “the metaverse” or “SocialVR” either. Yes, they have video calls. And group calls. But, they don’t have full on Memoji Land Social VR Or anything like it.

SocialVR/VRChat is actually the most popular use for people who are VR enthusiasts. AFAIK.

It’s yet to be seen if VRChat, or similar will make it to Vision Pro. The lack of vr controllers may be an awkward situation there.

Oh, and to your point about Metaverse failing. That’s a hard one to crack unless you are open to allowing everything to be totally free form like VRChat. Making a safe metaverse with clean public spaces that people also want to use is difficult.

Oh, and for me, “Metaverse” is only framed as SocialVR. Not the expansive all-inclusive omni thing definition. The whole word has been muddied.