But I think that FB/Meta's strategy was rather smarter than most people give it credit.
This is just a hunch of mine, but I think that FB didn't have this crystalised vision of where they wanted to go with Metaverse.
But by hyping the buzzword they primed the market, and now they can develop and meanwhile look around what others are doing. Upcoming players they can buy-out, acquire them. They don't do innovation themselves. The Big Techz aren't all that innovative anymore.