Zuckerberg's Metaverse Rush Pauses For 'Quality Lockdown'

A year after Meta announced its metaverse push, it has yet to demonstrate that its $10bn a year bet on an immersive virtual world will be a success. From a report: According to memos and conversations with 10 current and former employees, his 3bn user-strong social media empire is experiencing disruption and challenges as part of the pivot to Meta, and has already been forced to delay future launches and adjust expectations. In a September memo seen by the Financial Times, Vishal Shah, the vice-president of Meta's metaverse arm, warned that users and creators had complained that Horizon Worlds -- its social virtual reality experience and the closest thing it has to a metaverse so far -- was low quality and full of bugs. He ordered a "quality lockdown" for the rest of the year, telling staff that they need to improve fundamentals before any aggressive expansion. Staffers working on the product had to "reprioritise or slow some things we had planned," said Shah, adding that he was lowering its user numbers target for the second half of the year. Some employees warned morale was suffering as teams got restructured to accommodate Zuckerberg's new vision, which many have not yet bought into. "There are a lot of people internally who have never put on a [virtual reality] headset," said one metaverse employee.

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