i'm not sure metaverse ever really had a hype train, i don't think anyone i know was excited by it
It was quite ridiculous how everybody suddenly kept talking about Metaverse without there even being as much as a vague idea how it would look like. Even Facebook's own presentation on the Metaverse was devoid of vision and just kept repeating stuff that Playstation Home did 10 years ago or that Habitat did over 35(!) years ago. Avatars, customization, multiplayer and that was it. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not a Metaverse, that's just a regular old multiplayer social app of which we had numerous in the last few decades, both inside and outside of VR. There was no vision of how to evolve that beyond that, even the really obvious stuff was nowhere to be seen (online shopping in VR, anybody?).
Some companies tried to mix some crypto bullshit into it to make another Second Life happen, but even that's not new, LindenLabs already had their own VR game that failed with Sansar.
Metaverse was really hype about nothing, just Zuckerberg spending billions on something trying to stay relevant and everybody else wanting their piece of the cake too. Took them a while to realize that there never was any cake to begin with.
Meanwhile people that care about VR just hang around in VRChat or play VR games, without any of that Metaverse nonsense.
Now without that ability, you need to demonstrate you can aggressively grow in newer, exciting markets. What underdeveloped technology markets with social media potential exist outside of this vague idea around VR? Can you name any?
The problem with the metaverse is not that Zuckerberg went in that direction, it's that he executed so poorly and so publicly that he's lost any sort of goodwill from that attempt at a new market. If he wasn't literally un-firable, he'd be have long lost his CEO position.
The problem is that Facebook and Instagram are "the old thing" and WhatsApp monetization ja hard without pushing users to Signal (or Apple iMessage) while kids spend their time on TikTok instead. Facebook needs to find the next thing after TikTok to pull future generations of users in. And from their view a new world offers tons of ways to monetize.
The wholesale rename of everything is necessary when you're trying to distance yourself from a poisoned past. It's not just about end-users, it's about recruiting and retaining talented employees. The sooner they can make folks disassociate the entire operation from the bad FB name the better. Many engineers aren't interested in telling their friends/family they work for FB, that awful company that enabled the CA scandal etc. Now they'd be able to say they work for Meta, that VR company.
Correct, that's why I still called them Facebook, not Meta, in my post. ;)
(Note: /s, not even close to the real definition)
People intuitively 'get' the Metaverse, and if it was good, everyone would be doing it.
I remember that crap from like 25 years ago, this is kind of the 3rd try and it failed, but I'm betting the next evolution will hit.
Now it won't be exactly the Metaverse rather just '3D / immersive' but still, it will take over.
I'm worried it's the start of Idiocracy though.
ChatGPT doesn’t require “getting”. It just responds in a freakishly human way by standards that have existed up to now.
But literally nobody “intuitively gets” metaverse. It just looks like a crappy Wii edition of Second Life, but proponents (Facebook staff) always seem to say “no dude it’s not like that it all it’s like dude you gotta listen it’s going to dude like revolutionize dude are you listening it’s uhhhhh” and nobody knows wtf it is
Platforms that aren't products for end users are nerdy, especially ones that don't even exist yet.
You aren't going to find an old person start talking to you about a new functions Microsoft added to the Windows SDK, but you could hear them talk about a new feature in a Windows app they use.
>It just looks like a crappy Wii edition of Second Life
The metaverse doesn't exist yet. Someone could make a product like that for the metaverse, but that is just one product. Not all products will look the same, and not all product will boolean heavy into being like second life.
They'd almost have been better off not bothering to make it.
They will be using Siri, which already exists, it will just be better.
"But literally nobody “intuitively gets” metaverse"
? The first time you put on a 3D headset you are viscerally 'moved' in a way that ChatGPT can never compete with.
The only problem is, it makes you sick, the graphics are not good, the games are not good etc..
When the 'promise' of Virtual/3D is finally fulfilled, everyone will do it.
They most definitely are. Normies find ChatGPT absolutely fascinating for a variety of purposes, whether that's creative or just asking questions. It's basically magic to them.
Meta's "the metaverse" is just any random obscure retro PS1-style game for them.