Big Tech companies do take cognisance of the technologies newly emerging, and support them. Facebook, renamed as Meta evinced interest in a 3D virtual world accessible through hardware. It is called metaverse. The journey started in October, 2021. Facebook had realised that it had attracted huge amount of digital advertising. However, Apple introduced user option for tracking as a privacy feature. That affects the advertising revenues of Facebook in a big way. Facebook was not comfortable entering the hardware field. Facebook re-oriented itself to what was declared the future of internet — the metaverse.

Later, Facebook got interested in blockchain technology and cryptos. It thought of introducing a crypto currency Libra. But that projected was shutdown. Facebook also was interested in a video calling device-Portal, but closed the project in 2022.

Instagram NFT support was announced in May 2022. It enables creators to showcase NFTs on Instagram. However, it has disabled this feature in March 2023.

Facebook has not closed down Metaverse project as yet, but has started shifting its focus to AI. Its foray into metaverse happened at a time when it was tainted by the Cambridge Analytica case of the data breach. The company put $10 billion in 2022 in Reality Labs to focus on hardware. However, the Labs has a reported a loss of $13.7 billion in 2022. Metaverse can gain traction in future but not in the short term. There is decline in users and share prices. Facebook has laid off employees.

Facebook is focusing on AI and is building algorithms that furthers its original tenet — bringing the world closer.