The Metaverse Reader

What is a Metaverse? There is a real answer — aka the science fiction answer. And there is an answer you will get from Zuck and his acolytes. They are busy rearchitecting the company away from social networking. They are literally putting Meta into the metaverse, as per this report in The New York Times.

Reality Labs is now at the forefront of the company’s shift to the metaverse, employees said. Workers in products, engineering and research have been encouraged to apply to new roles there, they said, while others have been elevated from their jobs in social networking divisions to lead the same functions with a metaverse emphasis.

The New York Times

Say what you may about Mark Zuckerberg, but when he decides to move, he doesn’t give a damn. You do it his way or simply leave the company. Quite a few senior team members are cashing in their checks and quitting the company. My old colleague Wagner James Au in a blog post last year about the Meta-makeover had an interesting comment from an insider.

“I think Facebook has the money and people to throw at the problem,” as they put it to me, “but making 0-1 products as a large entity hasn’t been one of Facebook’s strong suits… it’s been to acquire other products and integrate them into the Facebook ecosystem.

New World Notes

Facebook reminds me of the old Microsoft — the company that would announce a new initiative and the collective technology industry would twitch uncontrollably. It is no surprise that everyone is talking up their Metaverse game.

Metaverse is the new “cloud” or “big data.” It is a new buzzword, that is going to be bastardized into every conversation — no one will let the facts come in the way of fiction. I am waiting for Marc Benioff to announce a SalesforceVerse any day soon!

Here are a few articles that might get you started to get a grip of the hype.

• Silicon Valley has a Metaverse FOMO, writes John Naughton. It doesn’t matter whether it is dystopian or not — there is money to be made, so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. [The Guardian]
• Wall Street hasn’t met a technology buzzword it hasn’t like and wanted to profit from. So why are we surprised that they are all over the “metaverse.” [Fortune Magazine
• If Zuck says Metaverse, the whole ecosystem starts to get warm and fuzzy. At CES 2022, lot of small players were taking Meta and Metaverse. [SP Global]
• Metaverse is all about marketing and advertising. The only reason Facebook is all over it. Here is how influencer marketing is going to work in this new space. [Vogue]
• And in summary, Metaverse must be stopped. [Tribune UK]