Once upon a time, the Metaverse became an obsession with the technological world, giving impetus to the rapid development of virtual reality technologies and the emergence of new virtual worlds. This effect can be safely compared with the current situation around artificial intelligence, where after the launch of ChatGPT, companies around the world rushed one after another to announce and publish their analogues to jump on this fast train. However, it turned out that people’s interest in the meta universe waned faster than when it started, and the Meta itself never understood what it was creating. Hype did not save this service, which never got out of the testing phase, and the lack of a holistic vision for the product ultimately led to its downfall, especially after the tech industry turned to a new, more promising trend: productive artificial intelligence. The fate of the Metaverse has already been determined.

RIP metadata store

“Metaverse, the once buzz-worthy tech that promised to let users hang uncomfortably in a confusing video game-like world, died after being abandoned by business. It was three years old.” – Starting the Business Insider article. Now Metaverse goes to the graveyard of failed ideas in the tech industry. But a short life and a dishonorable death can tell us a lot.

From the very beginning, Zuckerberg claimed that the Metaverse would be the future of the Internet. The sleek, fake promo video accompanying the company’s name change announcement described a future where we can interact seamlessly in virtual worlds: users will “make eye contact” and “feel like you’re in the same room together.” He claimed that the Metaverse offers people the ability to “immerse” in an “immersive” experience.

great hopes

These grand promises set very high expectations on the Metaverse. The mass media have been numbed by the new concept that promises to be unbelievable. But real technology failed to deliver on that promise. The few shows the company organized were in stark contrast to the videos and concepts being shown. The virtual world was weak, boring and low poly.

The Metaverse was also experiencing a severe identity crisis. A functional business offering needs a few things to thrive and grow: a clear use case, target audience, and customers’ willingness to adopt the product. Zuckerberg poetically described the meta-universe as “a multi-company vision” and a “successor to the mobile Internet,” but failed to articulate the key business problems its development would solve. The concept of virtual worlds, where users interact with each other through digital avatars, is an old concept dating back to the late 1990s, when massively multiplayer online role-playing games emerged. And while the metaverse was built on these ideas with seemingly new technologies, Zuckerberg’s only real product, Horizon Worlds, a VR platform that required the use of an incredibly bulky Oculus headset, failed to offer anything that came close to a roadmap or a true vision.

While conceptual development of Metaverse has been halted, the accommodating press has issued statements about the future of technology that range from unrealistic to downright irresponsible.
– Writes Business Insider.

The media swallowed Zuckerberg’s claims that 1 billion people would use the Metaverse and spend hundreds of dollars, but at the time, the company’s CEO couldn’t say exactly what they would be paying for or why someone would want to wear a bulky headset on their face. attending a low-quality, cartoonish concert.

The rush to get various companies into the game has caused investors, advisors, and Wall Street analysts to try to beat each other’s predictions for the growth of the metaspace:

• Consulting firm Gartner has claimed that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in metaspace.
• The Wall Street Journal noted that metaspace will forever change the way we work.
• International consulting firm McKinsey estimates metaspace could generate “up to $5 trillion in revenue,” adding that about 95% of business leaders expect metaspace to “positively impact their industry” within 5 to 10 years.
• In order not to be left behind, Citi has released a major report claiming that metaspace has opened up $13 trillion worth of opportunity.

And then everything fell

Despite all the noise around, the Metaverse was not quiet. When people were given the opportunity to try the technology, no one used it. According to Business Insider, Metaverse’s most-funded product, Decentraland, had only about 38 daily active users in its “$1.3 billion ecosystem.” Decentraland disputes this figure, saying it has 8,000 daily active users. However, even that number is tiny considering how many people play the same Fortnite, for example.

• In October 2022, Mashable reported that Horizon Worlds had less than 200,000 monthly active users, well below the 500,000 users Meta plans to reach by the end of 2022.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that only about 9% of user-created virtual worlds were visited by more than 50 players.
• The Verge wrote that the game was so buggy that even Meta employees gave up on the game. Despite the might of a trillion-dollar company at the time, Meta couldn’t convince people to use the product, for which it put their future at risk.

As the economy slowed, job cuts began in the tech sector, and the hype around productive AI increased, the meta-universe took a drastic fall. Microsoft shut down its virtual workspace platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, laid off 100 members of its “metaspace industry team” and made a series of cuts to the HoloLens team. In March, Disney shut down its Metaverse division, and Walmart did the same, terminating Roblox-based Metaverse projects. The billions of dollars invested in development and the turmoil surrounding the half-baked concept have resulted in thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people losing their jobs.

Zuckerberg doesn’t care anymore

Mark Zuckerberg, who was previously written as “addicted” to the metaverse, apparently waved his hand by switching to artificial intelligence. The media initially reported that Meta employees expressed concern about how fixated their executives were on the idea of ​​virtual reality, and as early as March the company’s founder himself reported that “Meta’s biggest investment is in the advancement of artificial intelligence and its application in each.” Our products are our products.” Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth told CNBC in April that he and Mark Zuckerberg and the company’s chief product officer Chris Cox now spend most of their time on AI. The company has even stopped selling Metaverse to advertisers. spent more than $100 billion on research and developmentto be the first in the market.

While Zuckerberg suggests that game development for the Quest headset is some kind of investment, the article is already on the wall: Meta is made with Metaverse,
– Writes Business Insider.

Lessons

Virtual worlds or the idea of ​​a collective online experience will obviously live on in one form or another. But the metaspace that Zuckerberg dreamed of is long dead. And that failure is probably one of the biggest failures in the history of technology.

Insider writer Ed Zitron says: “I don’t believe Mark Zuckerberg was ever really interested in the Metaverse, because he never seemed to have described it as anything more than a slightly modified Facebook with avatars and bulky gear. It was a way to raise the stock price, not the future of human interaction. And Zuckerberg used his vast wealth and power to force the entire tech industry and much of the American business community to believe in this half-baked idea.”.

This example is very meaningful to anyone who “still sees him as a visionary tech leader” and should be a cause for serious reflection for the startup community who recklessly follows the lead and spends billions of dollars on hype based on the most flimsy statements. Press releases.

In a just world, Mark Zuckerberg should be fired as CEO of Meta. In the real world this is actually impossible,
– Zitron says.

Zuckerberg deceived everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, persuaded an entire industry of followers to adhere to his bizarre obsession, and then destroyed Wall Street’s attention as soon as another idea started to catch on. A man who oversaw the layoffs of tens of thousands of people has no reason to run a large company. Meta, with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm, has no future: it will stagnate and then die, and the meta universe will follow it to its infamous grave, concludes the material’s author.