From the Financial Times:
The metaverse is just the latest incarnation of Las VegasFacebook’s reinvention aims to create a standardised virtual reality where the house always wins
From December 1, Facebook Inc’s stock ticker FB will be relegated to the dust of time. The world’s largest social media company will instead officially morph into Meta Platforms, to trade under the official ticker MVRS.The move follows Mark Zuckerberg’s bold decision to tie the company’s future evolution with the development of what is loosely described as the metaverse. In coming years, Zuckerberg hopes, people will transition to seeing his empire as primarily a servicer to this new digital realm. That means investors in the near $1tn market capitalisation company — and broader society — will have to get a grip on what exactly is the metaverse.
It’s not that easy to describe. Today, it exists on many disjointed planes — from gaming universes to virtual conference call systems. Its first and most famous incarnation was probably the Second Life platform, notorious for being a flop although it still boasts some 200,000 active daily users. Zuckerberg’s vision will benefit from far superior tech.“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world,” reads the Facebook spiel.
But it’s also likely to be an attempt to standardise the metaverse’s consensus reality so that value can be harvested from users in even more creative ways. That may sound alluring to investors, but economists, politicians and activists should take heed.....
....MUCH MORE, she's just getting started.
HT: The FT's financial opinion editorThe metaverse is just the latest incarnation of Las Vegas - @izakaminska’s thought provoking take on Zuckerberg’s plans for Meta https://t.co/lCuCOf1X99
— Tony Tassell (@TonyTassell) November 27, 2021
