We've written many articles about the metaverse, talking about its features and the reason why it could be an important part of our lives in the not-too-distant future. The consensus remains in fact that one day, the metaverse will become a multi-trillion-dollar industry.
But what if it goes wrong?
Although The Metaverse concept is in its early stage, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, believes giants such as Facebook will struggle to build on its foundation. In his judgment, the idea of a Metaverse in which people will be spending lots of money on buying virtual houses or yachts will be unsuccessful: there will simply be no demand for these kinds of assets. And without demand, investments in the metaverse will soon stop being profitable.
Facebook's parent company, Meta, was renamed at the end of 2021 in a move to shift focus away from its social media apps and toward Mark Zuckerbergs' dream of building the metaverse.
In reality, part of the reason for changing the Meta name was to distance its vision for the metaverse from Facebook, and the negative connotations that people associate with the brand -- but the Meta metaverses negative reaction could very well indicate that it did not work, since people seemed to be keen on emphasizing Zuckerberg's failings, potentially affecting the company's future growth.
In fact, Meta lost half its market capitalization after changing its name, focusing on being a virtual-world powerhouse,
A lot of people seem to be thinking that the Facebook metaverse is likely going to be a failure. The problem with Meta's metaverse vision is that it is less about enhancing our reality than competing with it. Despite Zuckerberg's effort to replace the Internet with The Metaverse, what is being created under the Meta simply does not hold any appeal.
Meta's metaverse is still very theoretical, and so, the company has a very long way to go to convince people and businesses that their virtual environments are going to be the future of the way we all communicate and interact. It is probably years before we will tap into the full potential of the metaverse, the way Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions it.
With its metaverse vision Facebook is trying to build a proprietary version of the Internet. By doing this, it hopes to fight the upcoming regulations that are making the internet a safer and more privacy-centric place for consumers, thus reducing the revenues of its advertisement platforms.
Despite all the effort and money being spent, Zuckerbergs' metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds, has failed to distinguish itself from the VR landscape, having trouble establishing its identity. The vast majority of people are just unsure of what it really is.
That is probably the big worry at Meta's headquarters these days. Of course, nobody at Metas would admit it, but if they fail to make the metaverse look good, losing the hold over younger audiences then the company may end up wasting billions of dollars in buckets trying to pull the water out of a sinking ship.
