Meta sinks $3.7B in metaverse money pit as CEO eyes Threads user retention

Metas metaverse-related losses topped $3.74 billion over the second quarter with the Big Tech gamer investing $7.7 billion on its virtual truth business up until now in 2023. Its second-quarter 2023 outcomes launched on July 26 saw Meta report an 11% income gain compared to the very same quarter in 2015, totaling $31.9 billion.Its metaverse-focused Reality Labs revenue topped $276 million, its least expensive in two years and a nearly 40% drop compared to Q2 2022. Metas segment leads to millions since Q2 2021 with included highlights on Reality Labs Q2 2023 earnings and operating losses. Source: MetaOn an earnings call, Meta financial chief Susan Li said Reality Labs revenue drop was due to decrease sales of its Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) headset. The departments expenses were up 23% to $4.0 billion, partially due to the fact that of development in staffing costs.Reality Labs operating losses are set to increase through 2023, Meta said. It mentioned VR-related item development efforts and more financial investments in its metaverse as the factor for the losses extending.On the call, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg stated the firm is concentrating on synthetic intelligence “in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term.” He repeated Meta is fully dedicated to its metaverse together with its AI financial investments and stated the 2 areas are overlapping and complementary.He added its AI model Llama is being used to construct a variety of products that will help users “produce worlds and the avatars and items that inhabit them too” and said he would share more later on in the year.Related: Already explored– Apple Vision Pro fails to impress Mark Zuckerberg Metas stock price leapt on the profits, increasing over 7% in after-hours trading to around $320, according to Google Finance information. Meta shares have gotten nearly 140% year-to-date however are still off from their September 2021 all-time high of over $378. Metas stock rate spiked to over $320 in after-hours trading on July 26. Source: Google FinanceZuckerberg mentioned its July 6 introduced platform Threads was “seeing more people coming back daily than I d anticipated” and said Meta was focused firstly on Threads user retention, then development and would later focus on monetizing the platform.The comments come the very same day as a July 26 report from information analytics firm Similarweb declared Threads users have actually declined 60% from launch.Threads peaked at 49 million day-to-day active users for its Andriod app on July 7 but was up to 12.6 million daily active users by July 23 with users investing less than 5 minutes a day on the app over the past week.Similarweb said it doesnt yet have the day-to-day numbers for Apple iOS users but presumes a comparable “boom-and-bust pattern.” Web3 Gamer: Apple to repair gaming? SEC dislikes Metaverse, Logan Paul trolled on Steam