A year ago, Meta held a prominent place in the metaverse. The company had just completed its rebranding from Facebook to Meta. Social media, as Mark Zuckerberg explained, was no longer a singular focus for the company. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first,” he said.

As Meta wraps up its first full year as a “metaverse company,” the outlook is considerably less rosy. The company has lost billions of dollars to Reality Labs, the division that oversees its metaverse work. His stock has sunk. The company, for the first time, has laid off thousands of employees in mass layoffs. Even veteran shareholders are beginning to do what was once unthinkable: question Zuckerberg’s vision for the future.

At the same time, Meta has not yet clearly articulated…