What Meta Doesn’t Understand

Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, has invested billions of dollars into a metaverse that has underperformed. The metaverse is an immersive digital world that gives millions of people access to interact through virtual reality through an iteration of the internet. There are
many valuable uses for the metaverse such as the distribution and purchase of virtual assets through blockchain technology, as well as a new way to interact with people. The problems that Meta and other big companies face is that their experience is top down, meaning the companies and brands are designing the experiences. Successful metaverse systems are ones that are community-driven and less planned.

During the Covid-19 pandemic we saw many large corporations get into the virtual space as a way to market their products. What they didn’t realize is that people join virtual worlds to do the things that they can’t do in real life. The current version that Meta provides consists of numerous worlds that generally offer the user the ability to play sports, buy real estate, and
go shopping. These are all things we can do in the real world and Meta doesn’t stand out as a unique or innovative company if they aren’t doing anything new. Corporations and consumers are letting Meta choose what is created and allowed in the metaverse, which is the opposite of what a metaverse is intended to do.

Meta is also spending tons of money to switch their offices to rely solely on the metaverse. Meta has created virtual office spaces in order to conduct meetings and encourage their employees to work in the metaverse. The issue is that they have spent a lot of money on a metaverse for their company to conduct business, but they haven’t spent enough money on
creating a metaverse for users to have their own adventures. Meta failed to realize that whatever worked when they created Instagram won’t work now because their users want more of a say in what happens.

If Meta wants to turn things around and have a chance at succeeding in this space, they should focus on becoming more of a decentralized platform. Metaverses like Horizon Worlds and Rec Room are good examples of successful systems because they allow users to create their own apparel, gadgets, and even worlds in order to let their users do what they cannot do in the real world. Horizon Worlds and Rec Room are also much cheaper than Meta, which attracts much more users, and their focus isn’t solely on making more money.

Metaverses that we imagine in movies, such as Ready Player One, are far from reality, and they will take years to become widely available. In the development stages of many of these metaverse companies, much of the innovation has been largely taken away from the users.

Many of these large companies will fail in the metaverse and Web3 space in general if they don’t realize that decentralization can’t be accomplished if one company is controlling everything. People want to join a metaverse in order to escape our increasingly divided and uncertain world in order to get away from big companies controlling what they can and cannot do online.

Written by Will Morris