Even though the Meta share price is in the toilet, Mark Zuckerberg still seems intent on pursuing his Meta dream. He even laid off 11,000 Meta staff due to his blind pursuit. As Meta continues to bleed cash (only slowed by the news of layoffs), it makes you wonder what the end goal is. Bankruptcy or something more?
The fall from grace does tell us one thing; Zuckerberg doesn't seem to be adverse to bold and expensive ideas, so here is one. If Mark truly believes his pursuit will result in a new profitable industry in the form of the metaverse, why not offer free headsets or heavily subsidised headsets?
It might sound crazy, but hear me out. The goal of the metaverse is to sell eyeballs to advertisers. You increase your numbers. And how do you get eyeballs?
But, the problem is once you give people a headset, how do you keep them coming back? Incentives. You reward them with inexpensive tokens in exchange for their attention and time. Perhaps a META token or something else. Said token is redeemable for fiat or in-world experiences.
Incentivising participation is not a new concept. It's the essence of Hive and Steemit before it. But, if those tokens were easy to earn just by participating in the world and not needing to spend real money, you would have a captive audience to show in-world billboards and advertisements, more valuable than some Meta-backed tokens.
Because post-pandemic hardware is expensive, subsidising the headsets seem more likely. Meta absorbs part of the cost; the user subsidises the other part with an ad-sponsored experience where they're shown an ad after a certain number of hours. It's no different to Hulu or ad-subsidised Netflix.
I'll be honest, I still don't understand the metaverse nor how people will embrace it given there is a movement away from tech (one of the reasons Facebook is dying and Mark is desperate to find something new).