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Investors were not impressed by Facebook's latest product reveals, which included, among other things, the launch of avatar legs — showing that the social media behemoth is far from convincing  Wall Street about its costly dive into building the metaverse.

The company's annual developer conference Connect this week focused on the metaverse, envisioned by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a parallel virtual world. Neil Campling, an analyst who is the head of research at Mirabaud, summed it up in one word: "desperate."

"No wonder investors are in despair," he added. Shares of Meta, which last year changed its name from Facebook, plummeted again Wednesday to $127, their lowest price since late 2018.

"Captain Zuckerberg continues to steer the Meta ship towards an unknown path called the Metaverse and is determined to splurge billions and billions of dollars in an endeavor to reinvent itself," Campling said.

Campling estimated that the firm would spend about $15 billion this year on the metaverse. That's in addition to the $10 billion it shed last year. 

"So, the greatest development of burning $10 billion of cash flow on this endeavor is legs?" Campling asked. "Fiscal discipline has become the focus of most corporates in 2022 — but Meta seems determined to follow its own risky path."

Even John Carmack, the former chief technology officer of Oculus who advises Facebook on the metaverse and its headsets and is a booster of virtual-reality technology, acknowledged being "grumpy" during a talk at Connect about the company's rate of progres.

"It pains me to hear people say that they don't even get their headset out to show off at the company because they know it's going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can make it do something cool," Carmack said. "VR should be a delight to demo for your friends."