In October of last year, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, announced that the company would change its name to Meta and he sketched a vision of a utopian future in which billions of people would live and work in virtual environments.
In the year since, Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees to make up for lost time. Meta has had a rough start.
Meta decided to put in place a quality lock out for the rest of the year due to the buggy and unpopular virtual-reality game.
Some Meta employees feel that strategy shifts are tied to Mr. Facebook rather than a coherent plan.
One senior leader of the company complained that the amount of money the company had spent on projects made him sick to his stomach.
Interviews with more than a dozen current and former Meta employees were obtained by the New York Times. They were not authorized to speak about internal matters, so they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A new V.R. headset and other new metaverse features are expected to be unveiled on Tuesday. The company is trying to transform itself to make up for declines in other parts of its business. Meta has lost billions of dollars in advertising revenue as a result of Apple making privacy changes to its mobile operating system.
In the past year, the company's stock price has plummeted due to broader market turbulence and investors' skepticism that the metaverse will be lucrative soon. The company announced in September that it would be freezing most hiring.
Matthew Ball, an investor and metaverse expert, said that the pressures Meta's business is facing are serious and not related to the metaverse. There is a chance that almost everything Mark has said about the metaverse is correct.
Andy Stone said that the company believed it was on the right path.
It's easy to be a cynic about new and innovative technology. We believe the metaverse is the future of computing, so we are building it.
A decade ago, Mr. Facebook got it to focus on how its products worked on phones instead of PCs. He said last year that investing in the metaverse would allow Meta to move from one technological era to the next.
Meta's bet has put it in front of the competition. The most popular V.R. headset on the market is the Quest 2. According to an estimate by Sensor Tower, the app has been installed over 21 million times.
Meta needs to be able to bring virtual and augmented reality tools to more people.
In February, Meta said that its game had grown to 300,000 monthly active users, but it was still minuscule compared to Facebook's more than 2 billion monthly active users. More up-to-date figures were not provided by the company.
Meta's troubles are compounded by the fact that U.S. regulators seem to want to prevent the company from acquiring its way to success, as it did by buying the two popular messaging services. Meta was sued by the FTC to stop it from acquiring Within, the maker of the V.R. fitness app. Meta has called the agency's lawsuit "wrong on the facts and the law"
After years in the spotlight for unpopular decisions about political speech on Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg has surprised some employees by becoming the innovative face of the company. The latest metaverse technologies feature footage of Mr. Zuckerberg performing V.R. versions of his hobbies, including fencing and a surfing- like water sport called hydrofoiling. A few weeks ago, the chief executive went on Joe Rogan's show and said that he wanted to build an immersing metaverse.
At times, his involvement backfired. The announcement that the app was expanding into France and Spain was made on Mr. Zuckerberg's Facebook page. The look of theavatar was roundly mocked. A person compared it to a GameCube release.
According to two employees, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives ordered employees to improve the appearance of their avatars. Mr. Stone did not give any additional details about Mr. Zuckerberg's reaction to the backlash.
The two employees said that a new version of Mr.
The upgraded version of himself was shared four days after the original post, and he admitted that his first one was pretty basic. A graphic artist claimed in a post that he and his team had designed around 40 different versions of Mr. Facebook's face before a final version was approved.
Some Meta employees are skeptical of Mr. Facebook's enthusiasm for the metaverse. He urged teams to use Meta's Horizon Workrooms app to hold meetings. Many employees didn't own V.R. headsets, and had to scramble to buy and register devices before managers caught on, according to one person with knowledge of the events.
Only 58 percent of Meta employees said they understood the company's metaverse strategy. The high turnover and frequent shuffling of employees has been complained about by employees. Some employees jokingly refer to key metaverse projects as M.M.H., an acronym for "Make Mark happy."
According to a post obtained by The Times, the vice president in charge of Meta's metaverse division wrote on an internal message board in September that he was disappointed in how few Meta employees were usingHorizon Worlds
Mr. Shah said in his post that managers would have to test their own technology in order to keep track of workers.
We built the product so much that we use it all the time. "Mr. Shah, what do you think?" "How can we expect our users to love it if we don't love it?"
Mr. Shah said in his post that the company would go through a quality lock out for the rest of the year to raise the overall craft and delight of the product.
Some at Meta have suggested ways to bring in new users. Three Meta employees thought they could increase sales of V.R. headsets by 20 percent if they marketed them to Americans who received student debt relief from the Biden administration.
There is evidence that the Federal Stimulus spurred growth. The company didn't act on the advice.
John Carmack is a well-known game developer and former chief technology officer of the company Facebook acquired for $2 billion. He is still an adviser at Meta.
The scale of Meta's metaverse bet made Mr. Carmack "sick to my stomach" Concerns about issues like diversity and privacy have hampered the development of the metaverse, according to him.
Mr. Carmack spoke out on the internal message board. Mr. Carmack, who is speaking at the developer conference on Tuesday, criticized features of the company's V.R. headsets, calling the need to run software updates before using them "EXTREMELY bad for user enjoyment."
Mr. Carmack did not reply.
Meta's chief technology officer, who oversaw the company's V.R. efforts for years, is at odds with Mr. Carmack because of his criticism. According to four employees who have worked with Mr. Carmack, he has urged the company to think about the metaverse primarily from the immediate user experience, while Mr.
The employees of Meta have been told to either get on board or leave. According to copies of his comments, the billionaire noted in a June meeting that there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here. The company has reduced budgets and frozen most hiring since then.
Some Meta employees are starting to express more enthusiasm for the metaverse. Several employees said that more teams have been meeting in the workrooms recently.
The transition has been difficult. An employee who was present at the time said that Mr. Bosworth tried to lead a meeting.
The meeting was disrupted by technical issues and the team ended up using a different method.
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