Let us take a look at Meta´s Metaverse, join me for a deep dive

I thought is it high time I take a look at all the MEtaverses in Web3 and see what all the hype is about? And if the hype is wanted or not. Let us goggle up and dive in.

The big fish Metas Metaverse

Let us start with the big dog, or whatever euphemism or synonym, or play on words you want to use to describe it. Facebook dived "head first" into this, they even changed the company's name. Something big companies rarely do. And they have poured massive amounts of money into the project, the number is around the $10 billion mark. Which is a staggering number. 

Let us take a look at how things are going for Meta and their Metaverse. One of the first stumbles came with the legs. Yes, literally the legs. In the demo, Mark Zuckerberg shows of a full-figure avatar, with legs. But as it happens it has later been revealed that the legs were in fact faked. And not something that actually worked or existed at the time. 

https://twitter.com/MetaHorizon/status/1579947568372404226

And this, like most things, caused some laughter and some anger. But earlier this week on the 11th of October it was announced that legs were finally coming. Well soon at least. ^^ Apparently this is because legs are way harder to do than you might expect. So the lesson here appears to don't try and sell people something that doesn't exist. Well, at least that's what I think the lesson should be...

But wait, there is more...

But this trip up was not alone. The first sexual assault was reported at the end of 2021. A woman describes her experience on the Meta platform like this:

Within 60 seconds of joining — I was verbally and sexually harassed — 3–4 male avatars, with male voices, essentially, but virtually gang raped my avatar and took photos — as I tried to get away they yelled — “don’t pretend you didn’t love it” and “go rub yourself off to the photo”.

And that is nowhere near ok or accepted behavior anywhere. Metaverse or not.

And the cartoonish graphics have also gotten their fair share of criticism. But in all honesty, most VR titles like this have pretty "pore" graphics. So at least they are not alone in it.

But most damaging is perhaps the fact that Meta's own employees are not holding their own product in very high regard.

Why is that? Why don’t we love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time? The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?

This was asked by Meta’s VP of Metaverse Vishal Shah on September 15 in an internal memo. And that is the key question indeed. If the product is so bad that the people making it won't even use it. How can you expect others to use it? But a few days later things took a turn to the dark side, at least if you ask me.

Everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do that without using it,

It at least sounds very dystopian to me. And very "forced marriage"esk. But maybe that is a good thing? Either way the Horizon Worlds team was instructed by Shah on September 15 to remain in a “quality lockdown” through the end of the year to “ensure that we fix our quality gaps and performance issues before we open up Horizon to more users”. That do not sound like a $10 billion success story to me. But what do I know. Maybe the shareholders are happy?

The stock price

If we take a look at Meta's share price from around the time of the Metaverse announcement. We start to see a similar picture being painted there as well.

Source: Meta Platforms Inc

The initial price was around ~$323 and today's price, October 14th, is $130. That is a drop of almost 60% over the last year. But it is a tough time and everything is down at the current moment, crypto, stock everything. So maybe this is just that, the market falling. What was that? The S&P 500 is only down around 21% int he same time. Hum, will you look at that. 

So while things are bad, and down. They appear to just be much worse for Meta.

https://twitter.com/lopezlinette/status/1580540778635735041

And there are voices being raised calling for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as CEO of Meta. And I can't really say I blame them. By the looks of it, the Metaverse is looking more and more like one of the world's most expensive failures.

But in all honesty, I can really see the Metaverse succeeding from the very start. To me, it was always a Web2 company trying to force its way into web3 out of greed. And Meta's centralized behemoth at its very core is, I would argue, the very opposite of what Web3 stands for. And maybe therein lies the problem. It perhaps was always doomed to fail, by no fault of its own. Simply failure by design.

Anyway, it is still slightly too early to start typing Meta´s Metaverse obituary. But at this rate, I would not give them all too much time. As if things continue on this path, the critics will sure be more numerous and louder over time. And if Mark goes that might very well be the final nail in the virtual coffin.

I hope that you found this look at the Metaverse to be at least interesting. And if you have any experience with it yourself, of the Metaverse or one of its competitors. Please share them with the rest of us in the comment section down below. As well as any other thoughts or opinions you have on the Metaverse.

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See you on the interwebs!

Picture provided by: Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar, Meta

Resources

1. https://decrypt.co/111956/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-metaverse-legs-were-staged

2. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/01/31/woman-allegedly-groped-metaverse/9278578002/

3. https://decrypt.co/111483/zuckerberg-meta-metaverse-quality-lockdown-employees-wont-use-it

4. https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-should-quit-meta-facebook-new-metaverse-company-2022-10