Why Meta has spent $47,000,000,000 on a product you might not know about

Here's the reason why Meta has spent a whopping $47 billion on a product that hasn't received much attention from consumers.

While the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram continue to thrive for Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, there is one product that hasn't really hit with tech lovers.

Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021 and the metaverse was officially born.

"There was genuinely a need and a desire at the time for Facebook, the company, to rebrand into something else," Leo Gebbie, principal analyst and director at CCS Insight, said of the name change.

"The company Facebook wanted to make clear that it was more than just that one social website."

Meta has spent $47,000,000,000 on the metaverse (Cheng Xin/Getty Images)

Gebbie added: "There was a bit of a sense in 2020 and into 2021 that this was a technology that was ready, that it was finally going to hit the big time.

"We’ve had a lot of false dawns in virtual reality in the past."

For those who don't remember, the metaverse was meant to be a serious of virtual reality spaces for people to meet, work, shop and play in, and was said to include 2D experiences, 3D ones and ones projected into the physical world.

As you may have noticed, that hasn't yet come to pass - but the company is clear that it's still in the works.

Zuckerberg also commented on Facebook rebranding into Meta and what the future of metaverse would look like.

"The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence," the Meta boss said.

"Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this.

"In the metaverse, you'll be able to do almost anything you can imagine."

Meta is said to still be investing 'significantly' into the metaverse project despite the massive losses totalling nearly $50 billion since 2019.

Mark Zuckerberg is said to be committed to the metaverse (Craig T Fruchtman/Getty Images)

In a panel session at the World Economic Forum last year, head of global advertising relationships at Meta, Nicola Mendelsohn, said it will take a 'good decade' for the vision of metaverse to come a reality.

She added: "We've been on a journey of over a decade, both with the work that we're doing in our Reality Labs and also in the work and the investments that we're making in AI."

Such spending is no doubt risky however with Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, telling Business Insider:

“This continues to be a risky bet by Zuckerberg and the team because, for now, they're betting money on the future while they continue to have massive headwinds on their core business.”