Most of us are now familiar with the term "Metaverse." Anyone active in the technological world or someone who follows the current tech happenings might have heard of the term metaverse more than once in the past several months.
Each passing day, we hear new use cases evolving and new industries adopting Metaverse. At this point, if you want to learn more about what exactly a metaverse is, we would request you to revisit our old article detailing Metaverse from the hyperlink.
There was a recent survey conducted worldwide amongst companies and about 20.63% thought it's the new name of Facebook, 14.29% thought it's a crypto.
This was not among the everyday consumer segment, who have less attention to technological fancies, but to leading organizations across the world. Though the technology is still at its nascent stage and not many of us can predict with certainty how it's going to evolve. But the kind of awareness and the understanding is to an extent abysmal and there are certain cases wherein people within the community developing solutions related to Metaverse aren't fully aware about the intricacies.
To some luddites, it may sound a dystopian path unto the future. Often during the development of a technology, platform or a product, utmost attention needs to be given to the feedback of our fiercest critics, so that we are able to develop and deliver a superior solution.
Addressing some of the common fallacies surrounding metaverse, we have tried to attribute some of the commonly misconstrued interpretations around it.
- Any VR solution or experience is a metaverse.
- Just like mentioned above, Metaverse is the new name of Facebook. Also, it's a new product of Facebook.
- Metaverse belongs to one particular company (or) an organization.
- Metaverse is a new terminology used by corporations to drive attention.
- Metaverse is a gimmick and a fad.
This list is not exhaustive and can go on, but we are limiting this to some of the top fallacies. Please do share your thoughts and feedback on some of the interpretations that you have come across, we will try to discuss them.
To clear the air, obviously Metaverse is not the new name of Facebook. Metaverse is not just virtual reality alone. It involves combination of technologies and components ranging from Blockchain, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, NFT's forming Web 3.0.
The basic premise of Metaverse and Web 3.0 is decentralization. So, it can't be confined to couple of large tech corporations. Web 3.0 is where you actually democratize it and the entire internet will be controlled by the users. There are several organizations both large and small operating and delivering solutions related to Metaverse and is building the same. Though the spotlight is only on the large corporations given their might and deep rooted market caps. This situation will change, when smaller entities are taken seriously on the meritocracy of their products and solutions and on the level of their domain expertise.
To address the last two points collectively, Metaverse is certainly not a fad. Given the kind of work and the societal impact it can create is huge, both in terms of moral values and economic values. We have elaborately outlined it's positive impact in the above mentioned article published a few months back.
Corporations themselves can't drive the attention solely based on myths and they don't invest extensively on such cases too. The recent investments by big tech-wigs and others would act as a testament to this statement. Metaverse is predicted to be a trillion dollar opportunity per year in the next 6 or 7 years. That's where all these investments are going into and not in diverting attention. Visionary companies survive and stand tall amidst pandemic, recession and ever changing times. That's the only reason why we see a few companies surviving and thriving across decades and generations.
There was a similar situation, which many would have encountered or read about a couple of decades back. It was the millennium dot-com boom.
People had very little or less knowledge about what exactly the companies do or their performances, potential etc. There was a mad frenzy of betting big on anything around dot com. The companies operating too wanted to quickly cash in on the buzz and many of them started internet companies just for the sake of dot com. There was a mad rush at all the ends. Eventually, we all know how that story ended.
We see a similar pattern in Metaverse, maybe not in terms of the value or development, but in terms of the understanding and deploying solutions. It's highly critical that organizations involved in both the ends have a clear idea on this and have a meaningful outcome.
Let us not create any more booms and busts !!!
