The Metaverse’s Biggest Problem? Nobody Knows What It Means
The Metaverse’s Biggest Problem? Nobody Knows What It Means
A multiverse of Metaverses
When a self-proclaimed Metaverse champion (Hello, Mr. Zuckerberg) announced his futuristic vision, he rushed straight to the finish line, desperate to describe his fanciful visions of how the world will spend its work and play time in this new digital environment.
But he jumped the gun. As I wrote in Monday’s edition of Trend Mill, some 18 months after the rebrand and pivot to the Metaverse, it seems that Zuckerberg has already killed his Metaverse dreams.
It’s partly because of the new shiny object that is A.I. It’s partly because, even though he has control of his boardroom, he’s still driven by the share price. But it’s also because, like all technological advances, everyone who isn’t first is last. It’s all about the so-called First Mover Advantage. Meta has discovered the consequences of not being first several times, finding itself in endless loops of buy or copy to try and make up lost time. Instagram. Snapchat. TikTok. Its lack of innovation has also resulted in the company being beholden to the makers of the devices its platforms need to operate. It means when Apple decides to restrict user data, the company loses billions of dollars in ad revenue. And they can’t do anything about it.
So when it came to the Metaverse — something Zuckerberg heralded as “a big part of the next chapter for the way that the internet evolves after the mobile internet” — perhaps he can be forgiven for rushing to assert his company at the front of the queue.
He had the virtual headset company.
He had billions of dollars at his disposal.
And he had a clusterfuck of Facebook/Instagram problems to run from.
It was a calculated risk that made sense for him at the time. If he could transform Meta into the Metaverse company, he would become the new gatekeeper—all hail.
Yet, it seems he was working with the wrong numbers.
It’s one thing to dream up a vision of the future; the real challenge lies in getting the rest of the world onboard with — hell, to even understand — that vision.
This has proved to be the biggest hurdle Metaverse creators face. In Zuckerberg’s case, when your company pivots to a very high-level concept, you need the people you will be selling it to have a collective grasp of what it means if you expect them to dawn their headsets and follow with you.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t.
Mixed Meanings of Metaverse
A study by Dept showed that, among 2000 adults aged 18–60, only 16% of people believed they understood what the Metaverse is. And it’s not just the general population struggling to attach a definition to the concept.
Those who share the Tech Mogul Circle with Zuckerberg are just as confused.
Snapchat founder Spiegel said the word “Metaverse” was never used in Snap’s offices, saying, “The reason why we don’t use that word is because it’s pretty ambiguous and hypothetical. Just ask a room of people how to define it, and everyone’s definition is totally different."
Amazon’s head of devices, David Limp, said, “if I asked these few hundred people what they thought the Metaverse was, we’d get 205 different answers. We don’t have a common definition, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook argued most people couldn’t even define the Metaverse, let alone spend long periods of time living their lives inside of it. “I always think it’s important that people understand what something is,” he said, “And I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the Metaverse is.”
(Of course, if the Metaverse does ever become a functioning thing, you can also bet your ass they’ll jump on the bandwagon. But I digress…)
The thoughts of Meta’s big tech rivals show that, even at the leadership level, while everyone is staring at the same thing, they are painting a different image on the canvas.
We know the Metaverse will be virtual (duh), require still-to-be-perfected devices as points of entry, will have some sort of economy where items can be bought/used, and every brand in existence is chomping at the bit to be included.
Everything else is, well, unknown.
A Multiverse of Metaverses
If the concept is to establish itself fully, it can’t be a multiverse of Metaverses — a multi-metaverse — full of various concepts, systems, meanings and protocols that work against each other. It’s such a monumental cultural shift, requiring new technologies, data, safety and a complete upheaval to social interaction that it needs a strategy developed in cooperation with those involved.
Zuckerberg seemed to have grasped this. He had discussed the idea that items bought in different Metaverse environments (likely owned by different companies) should be cross-platform, allowing users to take them wherever they go — maybe powered by blockchain technology? Finally, a use case! Meta even joined The Metaverse Standards Forum, created to help “foster interoperability standards for an open Metaverse.”
But it’s still so vague. The public needs a coherent definition of the end goal and insight into how they will navigate these new worlds. It’s not even the why or the how — it’s too early for that. We need the what.
Is it going to be a supplementary technology that, through AR/VR, interacts with the world around us?
Is it a more dystopian picture, with humans hiding indoors, dressed in all manner of devices, to interact with a digital world?
Is it just a second-rate Nintendo Wii avatar in front of a pixelated Eiffel Tower?
Is it just Ready Player One?
Will it find its true form in a wildly immersive video game platform like Fortnite? Maybe Fortnite is already the Metaverse?
Without this fundamental understanding, Meta, and other creators, are asking people to remain interested in an unknown entity. And it didn’t take long for interest to start waning, and we are still years and years away from the realized outcome.
To fulfil its promise, immersive experience, real, tangible, and exciting use cases needed to start appearing quickly in the public space. What we got instead were empty virtual nightclubs. But more so, we needed to understand what everyone was working towards and how it would revolutionize our lives. When the people at the top of the companies ingrained into our culture can’t agree if it’s even going to be a thing, let alone what the thing will look like, that’s a big red flag.
With news this week that Meta has reportedly stopped pitching advertisers on the Metaverse and is now going all-in on A.I., it seems even the most die-hard believer in the concept has learned a valuable lesson:
When the fully-realized outcome lies 10–15 years away, you can’t just hope people will keep dreaming as big — and as long — as you.
Because they won’t.