How Did the Metaverse Fail So Badly?
From Patrick Boyle On Finance by Patrick Boyle
April 12, 2026 · 31 min · Season 6 · Episode 15
About this episode
This episode explores the failure of the metaverse, detailing the ambitious plans by Meta and the stark reality of its user engagement.
In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of the world and announced that the future of human interaction would be something called the metaverse. He was so confident about this that he renamed his three-billion-user company after it. Over the following four years, Meta spent $88 billion building a virtual world that almost nobody visited, featuring avatars that — for reasons that were never fully explained — did not have legs. Wall Street predicted five billion users. Consultants declared it too big to ignore. A man paid $450,000 to become Snoop Dogg's virtual neighbour. The metaverse peaked at around 900 daily users. This is the story of what went wrong, and what it cost. Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Ways To Support The Channel: Patreon…
People in this episode
Host: Patrick Boyle
Topics covered
- metaverse
- technology failure
- virtual reality
- business investment
- human interaction
Keywords
- metaverse
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Meta
- virtual world
- technology investment
- user engagement
- business failure
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Meta
Books & works: Statistics For The Trading Floor, Derivatives For The Trading Floor, Corporate Finance
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