Zuckerberg bets big on short-video app Reels, metaverse

San Francisco: Betting big on metaverse and its short-video platform Reels, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Founder and CEO, has taken a deep dive into his next investment priorities that will drive the growth for the company.

The social network which now has 1.96 billion daily active users (DAUs), up from 1.92 billion last quarter, said that short-video content is the next big thing.

“Short-form video is the latest iteration of this, and it’s growing very quickly. Reels already make up more than 20 per cent of the time that people spend on Instagram. Video overall makes up 50 per cent of the time that people spend on Facebook, and Reels is growing quickly there as well,” Zuckerberg said during the earnings call late on Wednesday.

“We made progress this quarter across a number of key company priorities and we remain confident in the long-term opportunities and growth that our product roadmap will unlock,” he added.

The total revenue for Meta jumped 7 per cent to $27.91 billion in the first quarter and net income fell 21 per cent to $7.47 billion.

Meta’s Reality Labs operated at a loss of $2.96 billion in the March quarter. Last year, Reality Labs lost over $10 billion.

Zuckerberg said that the center-piece of their strategy is the social platform that they are starting to build with Horizon.

“We plan to launch a web version of Horizon later this year that will make it easy for people to step into metaverse experiences from a lot more platforms, even without needing a headset,” he emphasised.

The Horizon Worlds social metaverse platform is currently available only on the company’s Quest VR headsets.

“The best experience will be on virtual and eventually augmented reality platforms, and especially on our platforms like Quest, where in an upcoming release, from the moment you put on your headset, you’re going to be embodied in your Meta avatar and ready to interact in Horizon with your friends right from your Quest home,” Zuckerberg explained.

He said that the company’s other focus for Horizon is building out the metaverse economy and helping creators make a living working in the metaverse.

On the hardware side, Meta Quest 2 continues to be the leading virtual reality headset.

“Later this year, we’ll release a higher-end headset, codenamed Project Cambria, which will be more focused on work use cases and eventually replacing your laptop or work setup,” Zuckerberg said.