> Meta is going full in on the metaverse... so that's going to be hitting some critical mass fairly soon (less than a decade).

That's a stretch. Tech history is littered with big companies who went hard on a technology only for their attempt to flop. See: Newton, Virtual Boy, Windows Phone, and most recently Google Stadia. There's also little reason to think that CEO Mark Zuckerberg of 2021 is as in-touch with the what the public wants and tech trends as college student Mark Zuckerberg was in 2004.

Edit: Another way to look at is: Has Facebook ever launched a product as successful as their primary business?

They've acquired some wildly successful properties (I'm thinking Instagram & WhatsApp) - but their in-house product efforts outside of Facebook itself have either flopped or been marginal at best - Facebook Phone, Facebook Portal. Oculus might be the exception - for now - but there's healthy competition in the VR headset space and the market isn't yet big enough for a "metaverse" to be widely accessible like the Facebook website was in 2004.