You can really understand here that Zuckerberg really understands his business. He knew in 2015, that if Facebook didn't have a platform it controlled, it would suffer down the line. We are almost a decade out, but what he predicted has come to pass and Apple is now squeezing the juice out of Meta.<p>I don't think Zuckerberg is wrong about VR at a certain level. I think VR gaming makes regular gaming obsolete in many ways. But instead of making Oculus the "XBox" of the future, Mark decided that it was the "everything" of the future. A sort of wishful thinking that these headsets would replace the cellphone.<p>The cellphone fits in your pocket, watches fit on your wrist, and earbuds fit in your ears. A VR headset would have to be sunglasses size and even then they'd still be less ubiquitous than the Apple Watch.<p>The problem is not the vision, but the amount of money being spent. If Oculus had stayed independent, I can guarantee we'd have better (probably more gaming) oriented content.
Not really the worst strategy. You can totally see where he was coming from. He just vastly overestimated how far VR could go in even 10 years of heavy investment, if ever. No amount of heavy investment, even for 10+ years, is going to make AR or VR as ubiquitous as mobile.<p>You would need a headset so small and light it's not too far off from a pair of sunglasses. It needs a battery that runs all day. It needs to not get hot and burn someone's face. It needs to be fast and responsive in terms of both local processing and network data transmission. It needs to be inexpensive enough that everyone on Earth who currently has a smartphone can afford one. And, he is correct, it needs to have apps so compelling that people find hard to participate in society without one.<p>It's not even a guaranteed thing that such a device is even possible. Even if it is, no way would it be ready for 2025, maybe not even 2035.
I read this one of the previous times it was posted. I don't have a strong opinion about the metaverse either way.<p>However, this email on strategy is an example of something I haven't seen in any startup I have ever worked at. Usually the information is available in pieces in various places, PRD's, value statements, mission statements, whatever.<p>The pessimist in me also believes that most of the people I have worked with wouldn't even take the time to read such an email.<p>Anyway, all of this to say, I appreciate that it leaked and learned that there are people communicating in a way I wish companies I had worked for communicated.
Can you imagine this email from Steve Jobs?<p>Where is the end user? Where’s is the joy? Where is the reason why people are going to love this technology? Where is the practical example?<p>Instead it’s all business, but that business is worthless if you don’t start with the reason people want to use, embrace and even love your product or service.
I hadn’t seen this emails before. I’m surprised by how outward looking and myopic at the same time Zuck’s emails are, this one particularly so (the one about chat bots also comes to mind).<p>Ask yourself where you were in 2015 and see if you can get their take on VR or AR. For me it felt like magic. Like using an iPhone for the first time. Yes, VR and AR is absolutely the future. But social communication and media communication is just a myopic view on what the possibilities are! Interactive consumption is / was where it is at. A hybrid of games + educational experience was for me the quintessential experience a la Assassin’s Creed meets walking simulator.<p>I would love to just learn about places where I go passively with AR. I’d love to meet people and have fun stories shared via AR (as I proof read this, I’m not so sure about this but there’s potential).<p>Facebook absolutely should have built the platform first and if they did that developers would have come to build the apps. I’m surprised with 40k to 80k on staff they weren’t able make much headway into this until the past year.<p>Somewhat relatedly, did Zuck really write these emails in 2015? The color of the text for the date is highlighted weird. I’m surprised that the chat bot effort happened after this email. Perhaps, he figured chat bots would be a gateway to AR?<p>I think Zuck was focused too much on the control Apple and Google have on the average person’s eyeballs / pocket and on Facebook itself. The Facebook phone was an obvious attempt at trying to pry loose but they should have just kept at it. They could have built a Google Daydream like experience around their own Facebook phone.<p>All for the best I guess. I’m glad Facebook is failing. They have harmed more relationships with their algorithms imo than helped keep them together. The world might have been a better place if Facebook’s feed wasn’t trying to be so “engaging”.
I really like Ben Thompson's position in VR adoption - he compares it to the PC adoption. It was enterprise first, then consumers. Users learned how to use a PC at work, and once the price drops enough, they bring one home.<p>Thompson was high up on the Microsoft / Meta VR deal.<p>IMO Zuck has a great grasp of the trajectory of VR/AR in 2015. Meta is singlehandedly trying to will it into a common place. To some extent, they had succeeded way more than a lot of other commenters give them credits for. VR is way far prevalent than it was 2-3 years ago.<p>Oculus Quest 2 certainly wasn't driving the instant paradigm shift like the introduction of an iPhone in 2007 (15 or so years ago). Though you'd argue that precursors to iPhones were WAP phones, Blackberry's. They laid the ground work (Blackberry was also an enterprise-first adoption). As an interface, handheld devices are much closer to our familiarity with PC so the jump wasn't huge. Plus it has a killer use case -- everyone needs a phone.<p>I am very impressed by the clear vision in 2015 that we're still seeing it play out in front of our eyes in the VR/AR/Mixed Reality space. What hasn't happened or wasn't mentioned the killer use case -- the utility why people would need to be in VR/AR/XR mode.
This email makes such a bold assumption - that VR will play out like a repeat of smartphones. Or that some "next big platform" will. Is that guaranteed? Cars, houses, aircraft, boats, bicycles - all have mostly kept their basic form factors for decades, once developed and optimized.<p>I'm dubious that VR will ever be much more than a game platform. Certainly not a substitute for physical life.<p>Things you can't do in VR:<p>- have a normal tactile response to objects<p>- feel the acceleration of a vehicle<p>- feel the warmth of a fire<p>- eat a good meal<p>- eat a good meal with friends<p>- buy a coffee and get a buzz<p>- enjoy the smell of caramelizing onions<p>- get a lifesaving surgery<p>- have sex<p>- feel a comforting arm on your shoulder<p>- do something intricate with your hands and fingers, like carving something into a piece of wood with a nail; even picking up the nail in VR will be hard, let alone the subtle movements, grips and holds, and tactile feedback we take for granted<p>- experience nature, animals, ecosystems, and interact with them (as they really are, not cutesy programmed versions)
I think the fundamental problem they'll face is that VR won't be accepted beyond temporary engagement. You just can't expect people to exist in a virtual environment and ignore their actual physical reality for any length of time.<p>I would think our brains trying to maintain a virtual and physical reality at once for any length of time must get quite stressful. The virtual environment will be first to go (yes even augmented reality).<p>People want to still be connected to 'reality' and Mark's virtual goals create too much friction with reality for the sake of his geeky wet dream, at least to meet his scale for success.
I read that as naive, something I would expect from a business school student.<p>Here is the biggest flaw in my opinion: VR/AR is presented as the future of computing without questions.<p>This is so obvious that this assumption <i>should</i> be questioned from many angles.<p>Aside from this, in my opinion, such a large company should <i>NEVER</i> show a product that is not convincing. Keep it in the labs until it's good or at least cool enough for a demo like Boston Dynamics is doing.
Seems like this has been public for several years.<p>Nonetheless, it's quite eye opening to read the strategy so openly laid out. And in some ways quite a testimony to Zuckerberg that other than obviously failing to acquire Unity (why?) they have essentially executed on all the other elements of that plan consistently now for 7 years straight.
VR and AR are not the future, tech be there or not.<p>Most people have reached their mental connection quota today, and doesn't want more. It could be fancy, seamless, and at the same time nobody cares.<p>It's not 20 years ago where I'd read a shampoo bottle out of boredom.
<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/13/facebook-mulled-multi-billion-dollar-acquisition-of-unity-book-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/13/facebook-mulled-multi-bill...</a><p>I wonder why Unity didn't agree to be acquired. Say what you want about Meta they were pretty good at acquiring companies.
> It is more natural than mobile<p>this thinking is colossally misguided. People bought more laptops than desktops because they are less intrusive with real life. They bought even more phones because they are even less intrusive. A VR set is 100% obstructive , so it doesnt fit this category. it is something you use when you can "depart from real life". If something like that is the goal, the nearest thing was something like google glasses. it would have to be very useful for people to tolerate wearing glasses practically all the time (You wouldnt want to be carrying the glasses on hand).<p>The form factor of a phone is that of a book or notebook, and that has been favored by people for thousands of years because our hands are expressive. glasses are generally a nuissance that is tolerated because of vision issues. If the goal is really immersion with real life, it seems that neural interfaces a more likely candidate and that s the direction they should be going (or at least make something more mobile than mobile)
Zuck’s thesis is going to be vindicated in a few months and he will end up being basically spot on in terms of ubiquity in 10 years. The pivot to catch up conceptually with Apple is going to be tough but doable.
Just to chime in here on a real usecase for VR that I would absolutely 100% pay a load of money for:<p>I love traveling, and I'm fully WFH, so I can technically travel 365 days of the year, but the lack of a monitor basically makes it impossible to get anything done. My 15" macbook simply isn't enough.<p>It's kinda gotten to the point where I only do roadtrips around California so I can throw a monitor in the back of my car. If instead of dragging around a monitor with me, I can throw a headset that is as good (resolution, battery life, latency, etc), this would be something I'd be willing to easily pay thousands for.<p>I have a quest 2, so i know how far we are from this in terms of resolution, latency, comfort, battery life, but, figured I'd throw this comment in.
Y'know, this letter makes a lot of sense to me. It's an awfully large bet to make, though. If the bet fails, they might as well just become a dividend paying company, because they admit that they don't really have many growth opportunities otherwise.
I recently made a relatively large (to me) purchase of meta stock with the crash. I also bought the quest pro. I’ve been using it everyday mostly to play games. Sometimes I go in horizon, but there’s not enough interesting worlds to visit.
For anyone still complaining about this pivot, ad revenue is already drying up due to new privacy laws and initiatives by platform owners like Apple. XR (AR/VR) offers a potential future for meta even though the hurdles are hard
"once you have a good VR / AR system, you no longer need to buy phones or TV's or many other physical objects"<p>I'd really love to know what "other physical objects" Zuckerberg has in mind here.
To be honest, that seems to me like a totally reasonable way of looking at things.
Like him or not, Mark is a bright guy and he has a good sense of both his own position and potential.
It seems the 2015 Zuck is limited by what's familiar to him and utterly failing to see the potential of new technology. To him, VR/AR is just a realm in which to deploy the same apps, a market to capture, annex Unity to protect themselves (at the probable expense of everyone else - glad <i>that</i> didn't work out).<p>The idea of a large, shared environment as a platform for heterogeneous development seems to have never occurred to him. No vision.
Never read this before, interesting view. I am pretty happy that Unity doesn’t have Meta prefix and can be used to create unified multi-platform XR experiences.
Picture a next-great-leap technology with footings in this very real effort underway right now ... you can privately view and listen to anything in your eyes and ears, and let's include silent input with a last big of future technology.<p>Private conversations with people only you know. And everyone else in the room is having theirs at the same time.<p>I can be making a table in my woodshop. I can have three friends watching from a half world away, giving me feedback or even safety tips. They're my closest circle. They're my family. We're always there. Wake up, first thought is "who's awake? keep me company while I get coffee".<p>What happens to what we call families right now, when they are further away than the ones living in our thoughts?<p>Could this be a kintsugi moment for social networking? That the lonely amongst us can find a tribe of real humans, to quash the qualm, to salve the screaming silence? Or does it dig deeper the divide?
The most interesting approach to VR from my point of view is to turn it inside out and use projectors and similar tricks to merge characters and settings with the real world.<p>The army has a 40 foot dome that they project images onto to train soldiers to use Stinger missiles. Some friends of mine did an art project where you go into a "time blender" which directs you into six different rooms with different experiences, the "time blender" they built wasn't up to the standard of the rooms so I am thinking of how to make a mini version of that dome.<p>I have been talking for a year about projecting a video game character as a Pepper's Ghost and doing a sketch comedy routine with it, I really have to get off my ass and do it (maybe make a little pepper's ghost fairy) even if it's almost impossible for a schizoid like me to be consistently funny.
Everything he says except the second paragraph seems spot on to me. But I'm worried (for him I guess) that he's ignoring lots of evidence that VR just can't work - like, it's natural seeming in theory but every time it has been done it makes our brains and stomachs confused.
One of my friend works in a division related to VR at Meta. He is constantly battling to close the tickets, build new features (defined by someone). My gut feeling says, innovation doesn't come from closing already defined tasks, it should come from calm, relaxed, curious explorations
Marry VR with Bollywood & Tollywood dance numbers using VR cameras and they will sell like hot cakes in India.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/_0uZAQyxT_U" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/_0uZAQyxT_U</a>
Maybe it's just my view, but I see the usefulness of FB as a platform that allows people to keep in touch or find others and then meet IRL. There's no replacement for a real interaction. The big downside of that though is those who don't want to use the same medium, can't anymore plan to be real-life social within the same circles.<p>I don't think VR would improve on this use case, especially for the mass market of "casual" FB users. AR could be useful however, for more of a "contextual" help while actually doing RL.
He really did have the Hyperreality vision.[1] "Our vision is that VR / AR will be the next major computing platform after mobile in about 10 years.
It can be even more ubquitous than mobile - especially once we reach AR - since you can always have it on."<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs</a>
It looks like the AR glasses will depend on an external compute device, like the phone. If Facebook had invested more into their phone product, they would have a much easier time to compete against Apple/Google. Funny to think that they for a small amount of their VR investment (31b) they could have bought Xiaomi which would have given them a platform to expand on.
The odd piece of this is characterizing VR as a bridge to AR from the user's perspective. An AR that is out of the way when you don't want it is somewhat plausible, but for most people the idea of strapping a VR headset to your face and completely blocking off the outside world is a nightmare. How do you get from one to the other?
I have a saying: Software is eating the world but hardware creates the new world. Without a hardware play, no company can become the next Apple. Whether VR/AR is the right paradigm though, is yet to be seen. I also think Facebook will not be the one to crack this. Existing companies usually don't bring the next wave of the world.
The problem is he could t think outside of his social networking box. He thought a clone of second space would be the killer feature. That is the reason for his troubles. I cannot understand how he expects people to live in that device and much less get the stickiness of a phone/apps
Facebook could have bought Owlchemy Labs or the Rec Room team really early and turn that into "the metaverse." Instead it looks like it was designed by people who have never played a video game. His vision makes sense and the headsets are great.
I believe he's mostly right except that he need a hardware breakthrough, the same way mobile phones had a hardware breakthrough in 2007 with the invention of good enough LCD touch screens and batteries. VR and AR is much harder but not impossible.
Here’s a hypothetical: what if Facebook had taken all that money and blind effort invested in VR over the last decade and instead fully committed to creating a competitor to Android/iPhone?<p>I think that strategy would have had a better chance of success.
I wonder if Mark thought we would have cheaper or more-accessible headsets by now. The real danger in all of this is Apple coming out with their rumored glasses. If they do that, they will capture the platform that FB will be subservient to.
As long as SteamVR does not work on a 1030 and Quest 3 is less powerful; VR will not meet it's energy requirement balance.<p>The real metaverse is action MMO and that can run on a 5W Raspberry 4 at low resolutions.
Imagine you have a business cutting up ice in the mountains, and shipping it to hot places. The refrigerator is invented, threatening your bottom line. Is the right thing to do to go into refrigeration?<p>Nope. You don't know anything about it, and have no experience with manufacturing. The truth is, you should get the money you can out of your firm and wind it down.<p>You could try to buy a refrigerator business of course, but would you be a competent owner? What you know is shipping ice.<p>None of the executives at Facebook knew anything about making a good VR social experience. They seem to have created an expensive failure, and that isn't a surprising result. They do know a lot about content moderation, and from what I can tell, that part was extremely well thought out.
VR doesn't seem as useful as AR, and AR isn't going to be a thing till we get something "wearable" in the sense you are happy wearing it like glasses / a watch.
reading this it seems like he lives in a vacuum surrounded by people who either lack vision or understanding of what the future really will look like in ten years... it's a sad read actually. As if brain implants will be the next facebook, it is an unrealistic goal, but also not an accurate vision of the future world from an engineers perspective.
The idea clearly has potential but it's the execution that's lacking. In 20-30 years someone will have developed a headband or implant that allows direct sensory manipulation and VR/AR will be the next frontier. Until then, throwing money at increasingly elaborate glasses is just a waste. They should just focus on the platform and abandon the glasses for now.
>Beyond the sheer value we can deliver to humanity by accelerating and shaping the development of this technology<p>This email had me somewhat upset until I remembered that Meta is floundering and failing badly. It seems self-evident to Zuckerberg that broadly-adopted AR/VR would be an automatic positive for humanity. I can't imagine a world in which AR/VR is a positive. I don't see any reason for VR/AR to be seen a positive development.
Is it just me, or is this email wildly unpersuasive?<p>Is this a side effect of the control structure he wields over the organization, therefore he doesn't actually need to build consensus towards a common goal? It seems to fall into a weird in-between communication style - not quite elevator pitch, not quite status update.<p>I'm honestly confused why/how a major CEO communicates in this way.
Everything he says on the email makes sense, except 7 years later I don’t believe anyone other than Apple will be able to build realistic AR hardware any time soon, and no one will care that Meta was first with their platform. Apple can easily build the platform/ecosystem on top of what they already have overnight, once their hardware has cornered the market.
If I were in Zuckerberg's position, I would leave the Oculus to gaming and let it mature there and maybe sell it similar to industrial use cases. I would then focus on Rust and typescript and create an OS on the phone that allows you to run Rust and Typescript apps. Likely a typescript bridge to rust. Now you have a whole ecosystem and developer community waiting to disrupt the mobile device with the two most popular languages. They will naturally build for the web and then for the Rust phone that runs typescript Natively like the React Native JSI for rust. Zuck if you're reading this, this is how you survive and beat Android and Apple. Use the power of developers who will innovate the shit out of the system that will likely not exist fast enough on the other two phones