Originally published on my Patreon
Kelly Stonelake is a 15 year veteran of Facebook/Meta, who recently filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging a series of highly serious charges around sexual assault, denied promotions, and a culture of discrimination.
While her lawsuit has been covered elsewhere, her last role at Meta included Director of Product Marketing of Horizon Worlds, which deserves special focus here. As I wrote back in March, a former Meta developer speaking on condition of anonymity described a workforce for Horizon who were mostly disinterested in virtual worlds or even VR.
Kelly Stonelake, speaking on the record with me, is able to shed more light on what went wrong with Horizon Worlds -- once touted as Meta’s early entry into the Metaverse, which the company even promoted with a Super Bowl commercial.
Seen that way, her insights also addresses a criticism I've come across often in recent years: If the Metaverse is supposed to be so important, why couldn't Meta, one of the wealthiest companies in history, succeed in creating it?
Because, Stonelake suggests, few people at Meta ever actually cared deeply about the product that was meant to help build it.
Asked to review and comment on my article, for instance, her point of view largely gels with what I wrote in March:
Meta's CTO Memo Was an Early Signal of Company Shifting Away from VR/Quest Toward AR & AI (Comment of the Week)
With news breaking that Meta is now laying off thousands of employees to focus on its AI products, this comment from reader Martin K last Thursday sure seem sadly prophetic:
"Despite the reductions," MSN reports, "Meta still has around 1,000 job openings in California, with hiring efforts focused on AI and other business-critical roles." So, yes, I agree with Martin that limiting engagement with the Quest is probably a good idea.
As for my original rant about Bosworth's memo, there's a pretty good conversation on it on LinkedIn, where it went mini-viral.
Posted on Monday, February 10, 2025 at 03:08 PM in AI, Augmented Reality, Comment of the Week, Making the Metaverse, Virtual Reality, Virtual World Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)
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