Not so many years ago, Meta was at the center of one of the most striking moves in recent technology history. Facebook changed its name, restructured its direction, and threw itself headlong into an idea that, on paper, seemed revolutionary: the metaverse, a virtual world where millions of people would interact as if it were an extension of real life.
The project arrived with tens of billions of dollars in investment and grandiose rhetoric promising to change everything. Hyperrealistic avatars, virtual meetings, immersive digital entertainment …
But reality was much colder. Public interest never reached the expected level, the available solutions proved impractical, and the necessary technology wasn't mature. It quickly became clear that this gamble was—at least for now—a misstep.
What's striking is that Mark Zuckerberg has never openly acknowledged this strategic error. The official narrative avoids mentioning failure, even though the company has been cutting investment in its virtual reality division for years. If any other executive had been responsible, their future with the company would likely have been very different. But when the founder makes the decision, the story is rewritten from another perspective.
And now Meta is taking another turn, this time much more aligned with the real world: focusing on artificial intelligence. It's the central theme of its most recent announcements, the core of its new products, and the path the global industry is indeed forging. Smart glasses, advanced AI models, and services integrated with social networks are its new flagship products.
Zuckerberg insists that smart glasses will be the natural replacement for mobile phones, something that sounds more like wishful thinking than a technical prediction. It's true that this niche is growing rapidly and that Meta has achieved enormous visibility with its models. But the landscape is far from unique: Chinese brands are entering the Western market with equally capable and much more affordable glasses, leveraging local manufacturing, industrial agility, and the experience they've already demonstrated with smartphones.
Furthermore, these glasses currently depend on a mobile phone to function. They can't run complex applications on their own, they lack sufficient battery life, and their ecosystem is still very limited. They're a good gadget, useful in certain situations, but they don't represent a real threat to the mobile phone, which still has many years of life left in it.
Meta has shown that it can pivot quickly when reality hits it hard. Its new approach to AI is more aligned with the future of technology, but it's also a reminder of what happens when a large company is driven by a vision disconnected from the market.
Time will tell if this new shift will be the success the previous one wasn't. What is clear is that, in a sector where everything changes at breakneck speed, even giants can make mistakes… and correct course without admitting it.
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