To Build the Metaverse, Meta First Wants to Build Stores

“We are, at best guess, at least five to 10 years out from a fully fleshed out Meta product or service,” said Tim Derdenger, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He said what Meta was working on was akin to the computer game Second Life from the early 2000s, calling it “a second shot at a Second Life-like service, but that is hopefully more immersive.”

Still, Mr. Zuckerberg has said he sees the moment to build what he believes will be the next major shift in computing platforms since the smartphone era. In that future, Mr. Zuckerberg’s apps would no longer be beholden to the rules dictated by Apple and Google, which own the app stores that distribute Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

Technology companies opening their own stores is not new. Gateway, a personal-computer maker, had its own stores in the 1990s. Apple has retail stores so people can test out devices and get their questions answered. Microsoft, Amazon and others have followed with their own stores as well.

In recent years, Meta had experimented with some physical retail efforts. It opened “pop-up” kiosks at airports and a pop-up store in Manhattan’s SoHo district to show its Oculus hardware products. It also had a pop-up location with Macy’s in 2018, with the aim of bringing more small business onto the platform.