Still on the metaverse.
Talking about something that is not there yet (Zuckerberg announced a product that he did not have and does not have, thus obtaining that many companies are throwing themselves into the market by offering their "metaverses") is quite simple.
The reason is that, in reality, if we take it as an idea, the metaverse already existed, and its most famous form was "Secondlife". Now, saying that the metaverse will only be secondlife on steroids is quite simple and predictable, as long as you specify what the "steroids" will be.
To understand what the metaverse will be used for, we must first ask ourselves "what can we sell on the metaverse, that cannot be easily sold in the real world?".
Let's try to follow the trivial train of thought, and say "hey, now I'll see you all in my virtual office for a meeting". Indeed, no: let's try to say "now I'm trying to virtually meet Pippo in his virtual office".
Then I introduce myself (unannounced) to Pippo, and I find a closed door, or whatever they will put in place of the closed door. As happens when you exit SecondLife, and your avatar disappears.
But if you are professional, you could leave a receptionist in front of the door. If you come to my company without being announced (to say, you want to eat together at lunchtime) there will be a nice receptionist who welcomes you and comes to call me. If they're not there, maybe leave them a message.
Good.
In the real world, if I want a receptionist I have to go to the world of work, or use those Japanese stuff, which are called Robots. I have two alternatives:
But if we are in the virtual world, I have MANY alternatives:
The virtual assistants of Apple, Samsung and Microsoft are just examples: in reality the AI and virtual assistant market is gigantic:
What's the point?
The point is that a virtual world is, TODAY, the perfect world to sell artificial intelligence services.
Are you really planning to furnish YOUR virtual office, when the first howtos like "how to have a professional meeting in the metaverse?" Arrive.
I therefore find the representation of Zuckerberg naive, which shows people (in the form of avatars that you can choose at will) who are together, in a metaverse populated mainly by connected people.
If I imagine a business meeting, apart from the artificial receptionist I can imagine an artificial assistant for the slides, and several personal assistants to record the slides, take notes, and more.
If we then move on to playful events, and think about having the "birthday on the metaverse", in order to also invite distant cousins and social media friends, we will find ourselves with a much more populated birthday, where we will have artificial assistants singing, artificial clowns who entertain children, artificial unicorns and everything that children like and make them laugh.
Ditto for less formal meetings, where any form of artificial entertainment can be sold.
The metaverse will hardly be populated only by human avatars: it is the perfect market for all artificial intelligence products, as long as you connect them with an avatar. (please, then your assistant will be a bunny and you will go to work followed by a bunny. But the point remains.)
The problem I see looking around after Zuckerberg's announcement and the first events on the metaverse
is that the internet is split, ie closed in a series of "walled gardens": the users of one social network cannot interact with the users of another. So if Microsoft will have its metaverse and Facebook will have its own, it will not be possible to exchange avatars or to exchange objects and / or values, if you are in different "worlds".
If you think about identities and objects, and especially contracts, we begin to affect the business. And this is the point: if SecondLife uses Linden Dollars and Meta uses Libra, who changes them?
There are two cases: either excangers start where you sell the pounds you have earned on Meta in Linden Dollars to spend on SecondLife, or you should download Libras and then buy Linden Dollars from them: but it is too simple a process for someone not to decide to automate it and sell it as a service.
The problem I see, paradoxically, is really a problem of globalization. It is quite clear that the "Facebook-Style" metaverse will be different from the "Microsoft Style" one, and that Microsoft already has an advantage in the office automation sector. But this means a split between a virtual world for work and one for friends, such as Linkedin and / or Facebook.
The trouble comes when we start putting in paid services, because it is difficult to leave the services in one metaverse to find yourself without money in the other. And it is not clear why a company that intends to gain a reputation on the metaverse should have to choose between the two: in reality, automatic brokers and exchanges will probably be born, so in the end the walled gardens will have to interconnect: if we think of teenagers, for example, it is clear that video games will be the best possible metaverses. What is not obvious is that companies will leave teenagers locked in their video games.
And really the metaverse of some university, where you have attended virtual classes, won't let you take your degree to Linkedin? And a virtual certification course won't let you take your certification out?
I don't know if, as some say, NFT will be the solution to this problem. But certainly, with the birth of numerous wallet gardens for different purposes, the need to globalize value will emerge. Whether they are exchanges, whether they are NFTs (i.e. absolute and universal signatures), the real problem with wallet gardens is that they will have to stop being so.
For now Zuckerberg does not care, since he launched MEta as an idea before having the product, for the sole purpose of avoiding antitrust (the same move that Google made with Alphabet, create a holding company), and surely he is under the illusion that since he launched the thing then it will also become "the main" metaverse in that field: but we must be realistic. Will Facebook really be able to produce an "office" type virtual environment better than Microsoft, which has been studying virtual offices for decades and is the alpha element of office automation? Will he really be able to produce virtual cinemas better than Netflix, playful worlds better than Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo? Will he be able to organize virtual concerts better than the music majors, including Spotify or Apple iTunes, or will he be able to create shopping centers better than Amazon? Virtual courses better than coursera or Khan Achademy?
To be realistic, Facebook-meta may perhaps become the best place for fooling around, but in general the metaverse will be divided into meta-galaxies, each for every major reality on the internet. Microsoft for the virtual office, Netflix for the virtual cinema, etc etc.
And attempts to keep them separate will be lost behind the myriad of brokers and exchangers, regardless of whether their respective galaxies agree to interact. After all, according to this logic, even the banks will have their own virtual branches, and I don't think anyone will be able to say "no, you can't spend your bank's money here".
In general, I think Meta was an idea that Zuckerberg launched to distract the public, but in the end, there are already dozens of products ready, there were already many giants ready that will come with a product, except that of Zuckerberg which is still being developed.
Unless you call this product:
which honestly, it's a lot less than SecondLife.
The point is, therefore, that regardless of speculation, what we saw starting after Zuckerberg's announcement is neither what Zuckerberg describes, nor does it contain Zuckerberg.