Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On May 9, meta-universe technology, which promised to immerse users in the virtual world, was all the rage. But with the rise of generative artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT, the metacosmos business has been abandoned by the business community three years later.

In 2021, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) renamed the trillion-dollar company to Meta. After a lot of publicity, metacosmos technology has become the object of obsession in the science and technology world, and quickly won the favor of investors. However, the lack of a coherent product vision eventually led to the decline of meta-universe. When the technology industry shifts to the more promising trend of generative artificial intelligence, meta-universe is doomed to failure.

Grand promise Zuckerberg once claimed that meta-universe will be the future of the Internet. When Zuckerberg announced the company's name change, he used a cool video to promote a meta-universe in which people can interact seamlessly in virtual worlds: users can "make eye contact" and "feel like they're together." He claims that meta-universe can bring people an "immersive" experience.

These grand promises have given meta-universe extremely high expectations. People began to hype this broad vision of the Internet, but real technology failed to fulfill this promise in a short life cycle. When interviewed using virtual reality technology, the host and Zuckerberg's low-quality cartoon characters gestured awkwardly with each other, in stark contrast to the futuristic vision shown in the video recommended by Meta.

Meta-universe has also suffered a serious identity crisis. A functional business needs a clear use case, a target audience, and a customer's willingness to adopt the product to thrive. Zuckerberg described meta-universe as a "vision across many companies" and "the successor of the mobile Internet", but did not explain the basic business problems that metasverse can solve. The concept of meta-universe has been around for a long time, but Zuckerberg's actual product is just a virtual world Horizon Worlds and requires users to use extremely bulky Oculus headsets, which seems to have nothing to do with the product roadmap or real vision of meta-universe. When Zuckerberg claims that 1 billion people will use meta-universe and will all spend hundreds of dollars, there is no way to explain what people will get in return for cash, nor why anyone would want to wear clunky devices to attend low-quality cartoon concerts.

Ambitious in the months after Meta was renamed, it seems that every company has launched a meta-universe product, although they don't know what it is or why.

Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, said at the Ignite conference in 2021 that he could not say too much how much a technological "breakthrough" meta-universe is for his company, the industry and the world. Roblox, an online gaming platform founded in 2004, went public in this round of hype, valuing it at $41 billion. The cryptocurrency industry has successfully convinced people that digital real estate in the virtual world will be the next frontier in real estate investment. Even companies such as Wal-Mart and Disney that seem to have nothing to do with technology have joined in.

Companies are scrambling to enter the meta-universe, leading investors, consultants and analysts to raise their forecasts for business growth in meta-universe. Gartner, a market consultancy, claims that by 2026, 25 per cent of people will spend at least an hour a day in the meta-universe. 'The virtual world will change the way we work forever, 'the Wall Street Journal said. McKinsey, a global consultancy, predicted that meta-universe could generate up to "$5 trillion in value", adding that about 95 per cent of business leaders expected meta-universe to have a "positive impact on their industry" within five to 10 years. Citigroup is not to be outdone, with a lengthy report claiming that meta-universe will bring 13 trillion dollars in business opportunities.

Despite all the hype, meta-universe is not on a healthy path. After all, every business idea or good market forecast is based on Zuckerberg's vague promises. When people really have a chance to try, no one really knows how to use meta-universe.

Decentraland, a meta-cosmic product based on cryptocurrency, claims to have a "$1.3 billion ecosystem", but there are only about 38 daily active users. Decentraland denies it, saying that there are 8000 active users every day, but that number is only a fraction of that of many large online games. By October 2022, Meta's Horizon Worlds platform had less than 200000 monthly active users, well below Meta's target of 500000 by the end of 2022. It is reported that only about 9% of the users create a game world that can attract 50 players. The report says Horizon Worlds is so flawed that even Meta employees don't want to use it.

As economic growth slows and a craze for generative artificial intelligence strikes, the metacosmos business is in serious trouble. Microsoft shut down its virtual office platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, laid off 100 members of the Industrial Metacosmos team and made a series of layoffs to the HoloLens team. Disney and Wal-Mart closed their meta-universe divisions and collaborative projects in March this year.

Zuckerberg and Meta also stopped supporting meta-universe. Zuckerberg announced in March that Meta's "biggest investment is to promote artificial intelligence and integrate it into every one of our products." Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, said in April that he, Zuckerberg and Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer, now spend most of their time on artificial intelligence. Although Meta has spent more than $10 billion on research and development to achieve "meta-universe first", it has even stopped selling meta-universe to advertisers.

Learn a lesson although the idea of a virtual world or online experience may exist in some form, the meta-universe is undoubtedly dead. This should be regarded as one of the most historic failures in the history of science and technology.

Zuckerberg may not be interested in meta-universe because he never seems to have a clear definition, just slightly tweaking the name of Facebook and bulky hardware products. This is just a way for companies to raise their share prices, not a real vision of how humans will interact in the future. Zuckerberg used his great wealth and influence to get most people in the technology industry and the American business community to support this immature idea.

This should also lead to serious reflection from the venture capital community, who desperately followed Zuckerberg and invested billions of dollars in hype.

Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, persuaded the industry to follow his unrealistic obsession, and then strangled another idea when it began to attract investor interest. Under Zuckerberg's helm, Meta has no future.

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