The Facebook founder just lost a lawsuit – because social media is addictive. But something else might be more important for him.
March 29, 2026, 5:55 p.mMarch 29, 2026, 5:55 p.m
Raffael Schuppisser / ch media
It was Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest bet. A matter of the heart – even bigger than Facebook itself. So big that he renamed the entire company after it in 2019. The Metaverse became the guiding vision: a walkable Internet in which people can meet thanks to computer glasses – almost like in reality.
Now the Metaverse is dead, over a thousand employees have been laid off and around $80 billion has been burned. Meta is realigning itself, relying everything on artificial intelligence, on the vision of superintelligence. All that remains is the name – an echo of a past dream.
Mark Zuckerberg imagined this development differently.Image: keystone
Zuckerberg wasn’t alone. Google, Apple and Samsung also invested in virtual reality. But no one believed in it as much as he did. For a science fiction nerd like Zuckerberg, the development seemed inevitable: from the telegraph to the telephone and the cinema to the Internet – media became more and more immersive, the boundaries more and more permeable. In the end: a cyberspace that can hardly be distinguished from reality.
So why did the Metaverse fail? Because Zuckerberg thought too linearly. “True innovation,” writes tech investor Peter Thiel, “does not occur horizontally, but rather in leaps and bounds.” It’s no coincidence that Thiel – once one of Facebook’s first investors – barely invested in virtual reality. The smartphone was followed by the computer. But the smartphone is not simply followed by the next screen iteration. But something else. The AI.
That doesn’t mean the Metaverse is dead forever. But for now it’s winter. Just like with AI – after the great promises of the 1980s. Only with enough time, data and computing power did spring return. The same could happen to the Metaverse. (fwa)