Gartner’s 2022 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies placed the metaverse in the earliest “innovation trigger” phase of technology adoption, with an estimated decade to go before the “productivity plateau” is reached. However, recent news suggests that the ‘trough of disappointment’ is appearing sooner than expected.

Meta’s Reality Labs division reported an operating loss of $3.67 billion for the three months ended September 30 and losses of $9.44 billion for the preceding nine months. Just two weeks after these troubling third-quarter 2022 results, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced 11,000 layoffs across all Meta divisions (about 13% of the workforce), citing “the macroeconomic downturn,…