During the height of the pandemic tech stock bubble in late 2021, Facebook (also the parent of Instagram and WhatsApp) announced its rebrand to Meta. The new business entity -- Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) -- had a terrible 2022, and its newfound commitment to building a "metaverse" business is largely to blame. The stock has notched an impressive rally in recent months, but remains down 50% from all-time highs as of this writing.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been changing his tune on the metaverse as of late, and for good reason. Despite the overall company's name change, the metaverse business -- currently filed under the "Reality Labs" line item -- is an almost insignificant part of the overall company's revenue. Here's how little it brought in last year.

Meta hauled in $32.17 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter (October through December) of 2022. $31.25 billion of that total -- or 97.1% -- was advertising revenue generated from Meta's core social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp). As you can see from the chart below, Reality Labs (virtual reality headsets and the sale of software, collectively the company's bet on the metaverse) was an insignificant revenue generator. It brought in just $727 million, or 2.3% of revenue.

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Source Fool.com