Facebook Q3 2021 Financial Snapshot

In the current quarter, even though Facebook’s users’ growth stalled in the US. It still showed incredible profitability in all its other products (Instagram primarily) and some interesting news related to Oculus, the metaverse, and the launch of the Facebook Smart Glasses (also called Rayban Stories), together to how Facebook is moving toward AR and therefore the metaverse!

Facebook Key Metrics In Q3

facebook-daily-active-users
As Facebook highlights the numbers for DAUs and MAUs do not include users on Instagram, WhatsApp, source: Facebook Financials.
facebook-monthly-active-users
source: Facebook Financials.
facebook-arpu-q3-2021
source: Facebook Financials.

Facebook And The Metaverse

Facebook highlighted in its press release that it’s betting a massive amount of resources ($10 billion) on the Metaverse. As Mark Zuckerberg suggested:

Beyond Reels and commerce, I also want to share some thoughts on our longer-term efforts to build the next computing platform and help bring the metaverse to life.

For that to develop a whole business platform needs to be built. And Zuckerberg stressed out:

I view this work as critical to our mission because delivering a sense of presence — like you’re right there
with another person — thatโ€™s the holy grail of online social experiences. Over the next decade, these new
platforms are going to start to unlock the kinds of experiences that I’ve wanted to build since even
before I started Facebook. Along with those social experiences I expect a massive increase in the creator
economy and amount of digital goods and commerce. If you’re in the metaverse every day, then you’ll
need digital clothes, digital tools, and different experiences. Our goal is to help the metaverse reach a
billion people and hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce this decade. Strategically, helping
to shape the next platform should also reduce our dependence on delivering our services through
competitors.

A business platform, therefore, is going to be made of the hardware, software, operating system, and commercial applications that can be built on top of it. And after all of the entrepreneurial and development ecosystem that might spring up.

As Zuckerberg explained:

In 2021, we expect these investments
to reduce our overall operating profit by approximately $10 billion, and I expect this investment to grow
even further for each of the next several years

The First Step Into The Metaverse With The Facebook Smart Glasses

Building the foundational platforms for the metaverse will be a long road. We just released the 128GB Quest 2, replacing the 64GB model for $299. With EssilorLuxottica, we released our first smart glasses, and they’re off to a strong start as well. But bringing this vision to life isn’t just about building one glasses product. There’s a whole ecosystem. We’re building multiple generations of our VR and AR products at the same time, as well as a new operating system and development model, a digital commerce platform, content studios, and of course a social platform.

New Oculus

This also aligns with the new strengthen lines of Oculus, the VR company owned by Facebook:

What’s Next? Facebook’s AR?

But how would Facebook’s AR look like? Here some hypotheses:

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