Mark Zuckerberg reveals how many people he expects in the metaverse

Following Meta's announcement of a new virtual clothing store, Mark Zuckerberg has sat down for an interview to discuss the metaverse.

Meta announced this week that it would be releasing the Meta Avatar Store on Facebook, where users can purchase outfits for their avatar. Meta has partnered with big-name brands such as Prada, Balenciaga, and Thom Browne. The prices for the clothing are yet to be revealed, but the store will eventually become a marketplace where developers will be able to create their own clothing lines/brands and sell them.

Zuckerberg believes that digital goods will be an "important way to express yourself in the metaverse", and people are going to want different ways to express themselves in the metaverse. Zuckerberg explained in the recent CNBC interview with Jim Cramer, that people will want to express themselves with digital content and goods for their virtual home or conference room.

"We hope to basically get to around a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars of commerce, each buying digital goods, digital content, different things to express themselves, so whether that's clothing for their avatar or different digital goods for their virtual home or things to decorate their virtual conference room, utilities to be able to be more productive in virtual and augmented reality and across the metaverse overall," said Zuckerberg.

Read more: Meta to launch avatar clothing store on Facebook next week

These purchasable goods/clothing will eventually become a large part of Meta's revenue as the company plans on getting around a billion people in the metaverse, with each of those individuals doing multiple hundreds of dollars of commerce.

Notably, Cramer met with Zuckerberg in the metaverse, where the Facebook founder explained that conversations in virtual reality can add new dimensions to communication, such as the ability to make eye contact with the person you are having a conversation with and spatial audio allowing for side conversations to occur in groups.

Zuckerberg recognizes that it will take quite some time for large portions of the population are running out to pick up Meta products to join the metaverse, but "We are at this point, you know, a company that can afford to make some big long-term research investments, and this is a big focus," said Zuckerberg.

As for the Meta Quest 2, the product is a success in Zuckerberg's eyes as it has "exceeded my expectations." The Meta CEO did state that he still believes there is some time before a Meta VR headset will get to the scale of hundreds of millions or even billions of people.