Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse is coming in last.
For those few readers that are not familiar with the “new” Metaverse. Whether it be because you have not been watching tv, social media, or talking to any family, friends or colleagues we are discussing the drastic and rather useless change that the social media platform turned advertising conglomerate Facebook made earlier this year.
They changed the company name from Facebook to Meta. They did not develop a new Meta product or add to their growing list of applications and services. They literally just changed the entire company identity that has already been facing security scrutiny to “Meta”.
They simply changed the name and made a sequence of ads as if they are the “Metaverse.”
“Meta” is short for “Metaverse” and according to Wikipedia this is the definition for Metaerse: “The metaverse is a hypothesized iteration of the Internet, supporting persistent online 3-D virtual environments through conventional personal computing, as well as virtual and augmented reality headsets. Aspects of the Metaverse have already been added in virtual world platforms such as Second Life. Wikipedia“
The question arose when we ask if we can even trust this company to shepherd us into the future. As we all may or may not already know, now Meta then Facebook came into scrutiny when a whistleblower who worked for the company leaked thousands of internal documents that showed the companies contribution to increasing polarization online. Renaming the company will not deter lawmakers and help us forget the sketchy past and practices of Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook organization.
When we think of virtual reality and the metaverse theirs companies other than Facebook who have taken the time to develop and get us closer to the future. Among these companies we have the largest of the bunch, Tencent. Lets speak virtual world and the gaming community. Today there are already over 6 billion player accounts in the top 10 games in the 3D realm and theirs 2.5 billions gamers in virtual worlds at any one time. That means theirs already more players today in the “Metaverse” than their are users in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp combined.
Tencent and Microsoft at the wheel…
Tencents top 3 worlds include CrossFire, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Dungeon Fighter with 3.5 billion players between them. Tencent also owns the infamous WeChat Pay and QQ Wallet which gives them an advantage in the online “social pay” system. This is to no surprise something Facebook still doesn’t have. To no surprise Tencent also owns Spotify and 40% of Epic Games who currently runs the largest virtual concerts on Fortnite. This platform has registered numbers in the 350 million players.
Never the less Microsoft with their world famous Minecraft that currently has 600 million players in their “metaverse.” This now makes Microsoft the 5th largest gaming company in the world. So between their games the Xbox council and their own Hololens technology it does seem Microsoft has long been in route to the metaverse. Not only have they been working on the technology for years they are well ahead of Facebook in the realm of the metaverse.
To put this into perspective theirs currently 5 million users experiencing any form of the metverse whether that be through a Facebook purchased product like Oculus or other in comparison to the competition. That means theirs less than 0.2% of users experiencing the metaverse via the self proclaimed Meta company. Unless theirs something in the horizon we the consumers are not aware of, this change in company name and direction seemed a bit surprising non the less.
We are open to change and hope to understand more of what Mark Zuckerberg’s idea’s are when moving the direction of Facebook into the Meta.
