Metaverse, year 1: a risky and millionaire bet to retain young people who deny social networks

A year has passed since Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, popularized the term “metaverse”.

This is how he referred in October 2021, at a corporate event, to his new and ambitious project: to develop an immersive virtual environment that is accessed with a 3D viewer and that gives a new meaning to connectivity.

The idea is that the internet surrounds us, that we literally get into the web, that browsing stops being something that turns off as soon as we take our eyes off the screens.

He recognized that the technology needed to make his dream come true does not yet exist;

it is a plan for years or decades ahead.

But he is clear that this is the way.

So much so that his company is now called Meta.

What is left of all that?

The waters are a bit choppy in the offices of Menlo Park, the headquarters of the company.

The technology giant is going through a delicate moment.

If in 2021 it suffered a strong reputational crisis at the hands of Frances Haugen's leaks, the former Facebook employee who revealed, among other things, that Instagram managers knew that the social network was toxic for adolescents and did nothing to change it , 2022 is also proving complicated.

This has been the first course in which Facebook has lost users instead of gaining them.

Meta has left 70% of its value on the stock market so far this year, which has cost Mark Zuckerberg 100,000 million dollars of his personal fortune.

The group's profits have been cut in half in the third quarter.

Analysts attribute it to the economic situation and competition from TikTok, but also to the fact that Apple now allows users to choose not to be tracked when they browse the Internet (Facebook lives from the segmented advertising it organizes thanks to that tracking).

The situation has led the billionaire to announce a hiring freeze, something unprecedented in a company that is always expanding, and to hint at a restructuring of the workforce in 2023.

Meta decided to show tangible progress on the first anniversary of the metaworld's reveal.

The star announcement was the launch of the Meta Quest Pro, advanced glasses aimed at the professional segment that improve the performance of the previous ones (the Quest 2), with which they will continue to coexist, and introduce mixed reality: they are capable of displaying digital objects three-dimensional in the physical environment in which we find ourselves.

There is consensus that they are the best glasses on the market.

sure laugh at zuckerberg's stock crash but remember that in five years he's gonna own your eyeballs and pause the ads every time you blink pic.twitter.com/607z7g7iQW

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 27, 2022

The metaverse is, at the moment, a sunk investment: some 15 million Quest 2 glasses have been sold and

, the most successful video game on the platform, has reaped 100 million dollars.

These are not bad numbers, but they pale in comparison to the tens of billions dedicated to the project.

While the glasses have been well received, the content portion of the Meta metaverse lacks.

Horizon Worlds, the great space in which to socialize, is a kind of Facebook on the go.

“I call it the Dejaverse [a play on words between

and

]: We have already seen it before and it doesn't work”, explains Avi Bar-Zeev to EL PAÍS, who for more than 30 years has developed virtual and augmented reality technology for companies such as Microsoft (where he devised and led the Hololens), Amazon, Google, Apple, Niantic or Disney.

“Some 3D worlds work well, but only when there is a good reason for people to interact with them, like in

or

Zuckerberg has received criticism for devoting so many resources to the metaverse while his company's income shows signs of weakness, although the group's accounts are healthy.

He sees it rather the other way around: the metaverse will be the solution because it will catch a young audience that flees from social networks and enjoys interacting in immersive video games.

A recent Bain and Company study reveals that the majority of 13- to 17-year-olds prefer to interact with their friends through video games than through social networks, a trend that is less strong for those between 18 and 34. The relationship of Internet users under 17 are more fractious than previous generations: they do not accept the rules that are imposed on them, they look for new things and connect intermittently.

“The metaverse is being built for generation Z [those born in the 21st century], everything must be ready for when they have purchasing power.

They are the target audience for two reasons.

First, because the proto-metaverses of video games like

or

have already lived , they are used to spending money there, they were born with it.

And second, because they give great importance to their digital life, almost as much as to the real world”, reflects Edgar Martín-Blas, CEO of Virtual Voyagers.

His

has been working with Meta since 2020 when he developed an environment for Facebook to host virtual concerts.

This year it was acquired by the Californian group Utopia, specialized in making custom metaverses for companies.

The tycoon has been working on this project at least since Facebook bought Oculus, the manufacturer of virtual reality glasses, in 2014.

Why did he decide to reveal his plans in 2021 and not later?

At the time, it was interpreted as a coup to shake off the many reputational problems that were threatening him.

“It seems clear that Meta has jumped the gun.

I think that the main reason for this leap has not been the state of the platforms or the technology, but rather the intention to relocate the brand, which was criticized”, says Pierre Bourdin, professor of computer science at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya ( UOC) and an expert in virtual reality and its applications.

“We don't know yet what form the metaverse is going to take.

And we will need patience: it took decades for the internet to take its current form.

Movements in the industry

Zuckerberg's careful presentation of his idea to society had repercussions.

Despite being an unclear concept and relying on a technology, virtual reality, which has been around for decades but has not yet materialized, the metaverse caught the attention of companies.

The industry bought the speech: the conventional internet is becoming saturated, the future passes through a new and immersive medium.

or

, for 69,000 million euros

("it's a big step" into the metaverse, said company CEO Satya Nadella).

A man takes a photo in front of the Meta logo, at the entrance of the Facebook offices in California.

China News Service (China News Service via Getty Ima)

Less than a month ago, in an unexpected plot twist, Nadella himself announced, together with Zuckerberg, a collaboration agreement between both companies: the Office package and the Windows operating system can be used with Meta glasses.

The

companies are beginning to understand that the metaverse project is incomprehensible for a single company.

“That's not to say that Microsoft has thrown in the towel;

at the time it also brought its products to Mac, its great competitor in personal computers.

I see it as a transitory agreement”, says Victor Javier Pérez, coordinator of the Metaverso executive program at the ISDI business school.

The movements follow one another.

ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, bought the virtual reality headset manufacturer Pico Interactive this summer and is already Meta's main competitor in the hardware section with its Pico 4s. Google still does not use the term metaverse, but has introduced a prototype of augmented reality glasses capable of translating and displaying subtitles in real time.

Apple remains unconfirmed, but the rumor that it will bring out its mixed reality glasses next year was bolstered when it was leaked that an advanced prototype was shown to the company's top executives.

Sony will release a console in February, the PSVR2, with virtual reality glasses and that promises high-quality experiences.

There is also activity on the content side.

A legion of brands have developed their own virtual worlds with greater or lesser success.

Deutsche Bank estimates that by 2030 the retail trade of the metaverse will move two trillion dollars.

“Many companies have already prepared internal metaverse departments.

Brands do not focus on it at the moment as a means of immediate income: they want to be there and understand the user, see what this environment offers, have information to make better decisions in the future”, explains Martín-Blas.

Meanwhile, China organizes its industry with an eye on the West.

In the party they are clear that they cannot let this train pass if they want to continue being a technological superpower.

His position is, for the moment, cautious: there are investments, but not massive;

everything is ready to go headlong into the business if it succeeds.

And, behind closed doors, Beijing sees in the metaverse a useful tool to transmit national values ​​and abound in social control.

A universe under construction

Meta does not own the metaverse, although the company has changed its name to capitalize on the concept.

There are many metaverses or virtual environments in which to immerse yourself in search of different experiences.

The idea that Meta's proposal trumps all others sounds ridiculous to Bar-Zeev.

“The popularity of virtual worlds like

stems from interaction, not from building a big space and expecting people to show up to spend money or friends,” says the Israeli-born Californian.

"It may not be possible to build a virtual world that appeals to everyone, but a diversity of spaces and approaches can appeal to almost anyone."

The sector points in this line.

Nike or Vodafone have developed their own metaverses, and many other big firms are working on it.

“The next logical step will be the interconnection between those worlds.

For the experience to be seamless, users must be able to take their avatar with their attributes and their

(or virtual wallet) from one metaverse to another without having to register each time.

The market's obsession right now is to get there”, describes Martín-Blas.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Satya Nadella, his counterpart at Microsoft, announce the agreement of both companies to develop the metaverse of work.

Still, Zuckerberg aspires to lead this wave.

“He's doing what it takes to have a good platform (hardware, OS, creator tools, etc.) 10 years from now.

The big question is whether people will trust Meta.

Visors collect very sensitive data from users: retinal tracking, facial recognition, external cameras to understand the physical environment.

And although the name has been changed, we all know the history of Facebook”, argues Antony Vitillo, CTO of the events company in the metaverse Vrroom and author of the specialized blog The Ghost Howls.

"Hopefully one day we can trust them to make good use of all this new biometric information they're going to collect now," says Bar-Zeev.

"But for that to happen a lot has to change things."

Will the metaverse then triumph?

Nobody knows.

Although Vitillo is clear: "If 25 years ago I had told you that you would live connected to the Internet through a little black box that you would carry in your pocket and that you would be aware of all day, you would have taken me for crazy."

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