The metaverse technology that promised to immerse users in virtual worlds was all the rage. But with the rise of generative artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT, the metaverse business has been abandoned by the business community three years later.
In 2021, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg renamed the trillion-dollar company Meta. After much hype, Metaverse technology became the object of tech obsession and quickly won over investors. However, the lack of a coherent product vision ultimately led to the decline of the Metaverse. As the tech industry turns to the more promising new trend of generative artificial intelligence, the Metaverse is doomed.
big promise
Mark Zuckerberg once claimed that the Metaverse would be the future of the internet. When Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s name change, he used a cool video to promote a metaverse future in which people can seamlessly interact in virtual worlds: users can “make eye contact” and “feel like they’re together.” He claims that the metaverse can bring people an “immersive” experience.
These grand promises have given the Metaverse high expectations. Crowds began to hype this broad vision of the Internet, but the reality technology failed to deliver on this promise in its short lifespan. When interviewed in virtual reality, low-quality cartoon images of the host and Mark Zuckerberg gesticulate awkwardly at each other, in stark contrast to the futuristic vistas shown in Meta’s promotional video.
The Metaverse is also suffering from a serious identity crisis. A functional business needs a clear use case, target audience, and customer willingness to adopt the product to thrive. Mark Zuckerberg described the Metaverse as “a vision that spans many companies” and “the successor to the mobile internet,” but didn’t spell out the fundamental business problems that the Metaverse could solve. The concept of the Metaverse has been around for a long time, but Mark Zuckerberg’s actual product is just the virtual world Horizon Worlds, which also requires users to use extremely bulky Oculus headsets, which seems to have nothing to do with the product roadmap or real vision of the Metaverse. When Mark Zuckerberg claims that a billion people will use the Metaverse, all of which will cost a few hundred dollars, there is no way to explain what people will get in return for their cash, or why anyone would want to wear a clunky device to a low-quality event. cartoon concert.
Ambitious
In the months since Meta’s name change, it seems like every company has launched a Metaverse product, even though they don’t have a clue what it is or why they’re doing it.
What a technological “breakthrough” the Metaverse is for his company, the industry, and the world, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at Ignite 2021 Can’t be overemphasized. Roblox, an online gaming platform founded in 2004, went public amid the hype at a $41 billion valuation. The cryptocurrency industry has succeeded in convincing people that digital real estate in a virtual world will be the next frontier in real estate investing. Even Wal-Mart, Disney and other companies that seem to have nothing to do with technology have joined in.
Companies scrambling to enter the Metaverse space have led investors, consultants and analysts to raise their forecasts for Metaverse business growth. Market consultancy Gartner claims that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the virtual world will forever change the way we work. Global consultancy McKinsey predicts that the Metaverse could generate as much as “$5 trillion in value,” adding that some 95 percent of business leaders expect the Metaverse to “have a positive impact on their industry” within five to 10 years. Not to be outdone, Citi released a lengthy report declaring that the Metaverse will bring $13 trillion in business opportunities.
downfall
Despite all the hype, the Metaverse isn’t on a healthy path, after all every business idea or good market forecast is built on Mark Zuckerberg’s vague promises. When people actually got a chance to try it, no one really used the Metaverse.
Cryptocurrency-based Metaverse product Decentraland claims to be worth a “$1.3 billion ecosystem,” but only has around 38 daily active users. Decentraland denies this, saying it has 8,000 daily active users; a small fraction compared to many large online games. By October 2022, Meta’s Horizon Worlds platform will have fewer than 200,000 monthly active users, well below Meta’s goal of 500,000 by the end of 2022. According to reports, only about 9% of these users created game worlds that could attract 50 players. Reports say Horizon Worlds is so buggy that even Meta employees won’t use it.
With economic growth slowing and the buzz around generative artificial intelligence hitting, the Metaverse business is in serious trouble. Microsoft shut down its virtual office platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, fired 100 members of the “Industrial Metaverse team,” and made a series of layoffs to the HoloLens team. Disney and Walmart successively closed metaverse departments and cooperative projects in March this year.
Mark Zuckerberg and Meta also stopped supporting the Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg announced in March that Meta’s “biggest investment is advancing artificial intelligence and building it into every one of our products.” Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth (Andrew Bosworth) this year He and Mark Zuckerberg, along with Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer, now spend most of their time working on artificial intelligence, said in April. Even though Meta has burned more than $10 billion in research and development to achieve “Metaverse First”, it has now stopped even promoting the Metaverse to advertisers.
learn a lesson
While the idea of virtual worlds or online experiences may live on in some form, the metaverse is certainly dead. This should be seen as one of the most historic failures in the history of technology.
Mark Zuckerberg may not have had much interest in the Metaverse, since he never seemed to define it clearly, just tweaking Facebook’s name and clunky hardware products a little. It’s just a way for the company to boost its stock price, not a real vision of how humans will interact in the future. Mark Zuckerberg used his vast wealth and influence to get the tech industry and much of the American business community behind this half-baked idea.
It should also lead to serious reflection by the venture capital community, which is desperate to go after Mark Zuckerberg, pouring billions of dollars into the hype.
Mark Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an entire industry to follow his unrealistic obsession, and then killed another idea when it started to attract investor interest. With Mark Zuckerberg at the helm, Meta also has no future.
