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Comment by d0gsg0w00f | Hacker News Reader

I think I must be the only one who thinks the Metaverse thing will be lucrative for Facebook. Just imagine corporate VR work rooms and VR school classrooms with billboards in the background.

I think the weird hype words are just because the marketing department is twiddling their thumbs while the engineers are building.

But this is also why I don't play in the stock market because everything I bet on in my mind usually tanks.

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I don't think it will be lucrative for fb because Microsoft is already working in that problem space, and has been for a while. They were working on it via Xbox Kinect back during the Xbox 360 days, and merged that into HoloLens suite 5-ish years ago I think. That's a big lead time, no matter how much money you throw at the problem.

Additionally, Microsoft actually is able to engage with the big corporate clients that want or have a need for data visualization, the US government chief among them. The "VR workroom" or conference call is a neat gimmick - the VR or AR security briefing or military planning session is a massive leap forward in capability, and there's a lot of money there.

> That's a big lead time, no matter how much money you throw at the problem.

Counterexample: PlayStation's lead time over the XBox, and how Microsoft threw a lot of money to catch up.

You're not wrong, but Microsoft was in a position where they could invest over a period of _many_ years, if not a bit more than a decade, to get to a point of 53% market share. I don't think fb/meta has that kind of time - Microsoft was able to do all that while their core business (selling licenses to enterprise customers) either held steady or grew.

> Just imagine corporate VR work rooms and VR school classrooms with billboards in the background.

Yeah, we are imagining that, and that is exactly the reason we think it will crash and burn, because, come on. What sane person would want that? What sane person would use that? Why would anyone bother? That is both boring and awful at the same time.

Ah, but you have to ask yourself: are people, generally, sane?

Yes.

Considering the state of the world, and having talked to many of its inhabitants, I, personally, am unconvinced that is the case.

That is just cheap cynicism replacing any real insight. You can do better.

You sound very sure of yourself on that, but I can't imagine why. The US elected a reality TV star and inspiration for 80s movie villains a while back, Ukraine is currently run by a comedian. People are apparently paying large sums of money for cryptographic nonsense. Pretty much everyone is trying really hard to pretend that climate change isn't a big deal after spending decades pretending it didn't exist so that they wouldn't (and don't) have to change their lifestyles at all...

I could go on. It's remarkably easy to go on.

Point being, you may feel better by insisting that it's just 'cheap cynicism', but I remain unconvinced. "corporate VR work rooms and VR school classrooms with billboards in the background" seems like a frighteningly real possibility from where I'm sitting; I watch people spend their lives staring down at a rectangle designed to shove ads in their face all day because "it's the best way to keep in touch".

School districts and corporate rah rah's rarely choose sane paths. Just look at the pandemic school response

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