Metaverse, the futuristic virtual world that is increasingly on everyone’s lips, began to be talked about on a large scale in October 2021, after Mark Zuckerberg , founder of Facebook renamed Meta on this occasion, announced the launch of a new mode of interaction with the web, consisting of a virtual reality system that would be able to guarantee a new standard of totally immersive experience for users.
How much the Metaverse business will grow
At that date, however, there were already numerous companies that were creating products and services based on virtual extensions of real worlds: the share of business related to the Metaverse has grown steadily, reaching almost 60 billion dollars since the end of last year. According to the forecasts of the research company Prescient & Strategic Intelligence, the future is on the side of this new digital ecosystem given that the business in the Metaverse will grow by 1500% in the next eight years, exceeding the market share of 1,520 billion dollars in 2030 with a average annual growth of 44%.
Although the Metaverse has entered the vocabulary of tens of millions of people thanks to the founder of Meta and the popular advertising he spread throughout the world, the first cracks of this new digital ecosystem can be glimpsed : in fact, in the face of an investment initially declared of 10 billion dollars, Meta’s Reality Labs division (the corporate branch at the heart of the technological and cultural development of the Metaverse) recorded 9.4 billion dollars in losses in the third quarter of this year.
The reputational problem
This economic data comes in addition to the recent news of the layoffs involving the Menlo Park giant, given that the holding company that manages Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp recently cut 11 thousand employees, 13% of the workforce. Zuckerberg bears direct responsibility for these layoffs which send various adventures such as Lasso and Shops into the attic. On the other hand, Facebook’s traditional social platform remains heavily understaffed, completely inadequate to manage the back-office and customer service entrusted massively to often very inefficient bots. The reasons for the reputational crisis attributable to Zuckerberg are now so numerous that they undermine the very value of the giant that he himself founded.
Mark Zuckerberg (Reuters)
Internal difficulties, but also clear stances taken by those who have made the Metaverse a business, such as the co-founder of Animoca Brands (a software company that develops and distributes games and applications), Mr. Yat Siu, which for several years has been investing resources and energy in the Web3 ecosystem, a set of blockchain-based technologies that propose a new type of use of the internet, where the user always knows exactly what is happening to their data.
Metaverse Meta model, the lack of convenience for the user
The controversy raised by Siu against Zuckerberg is centered on the lack of convenience for the user of the model proposed by Facebook/Meta which, despite the attractive graphics, is penalizing for citizens. In fact, already today, billions of dollars are exchanged in the open space of the Metaverse, in fact many more if we consider fungible tokens and, in most systems currently in use, the majority of the value is capitalized by the end user.
So why should transactions be carried out on the platform proposed by Meta, where the user will have to recognize half of the value developed on the platform itself? Sandbox, for example, leaves 95% of the profits to the user, so the Meta/Facebook proposal is anti-economic for the citizen and very profitable only for Zuckerberg himself. Facebook should spend much more to encourage people to join its platform: it is not at all certain that the model proposed by the Menlo Park giant will ultimately be the winning one.
