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Musing Commentary on Aug. 02, 2021 Week
Musing on the Metaverse
Facebook posted Q221 revenues of $29B up 56% Y/Y. Net income more than doubled Y/Y to $10.4 billion. Monthly active users of 2.9B rose 7.4% from the same period last year, while daily active users gained 6.7% to 1.91B (25.1% of the world’s population). To put this in context, the number of Facebook daily users is 145% of the world’s developed countries’ population. Zuckerberg took this opportunity to announce a plan to spending billions on a metaverse where users can interact with each other virtually. Wall Street is skeptical. Analysts asked how much it'll cost, when there'll be a return on investment and how much control Facebook can have over all the pieces of a virtual universe. “The metaverse is a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces," he says. "You can kind of think of this as an embodied Internet that you're inside of, rather than just looking at. We believe this is going to be the successor of the mobile Internet ... the defining quality of the metaverse is presence: creation, avatars, and digital objects." And "in addition to being the next generation of the Internet, the metaverse is also going to be the next chapter of us as a company." He launched into a discussion of three key themes: creators, commerce and "building the next computing platform" (i.e. one built on AI, machine learning and VR).
In this week’s Musing VR/AR section, we provide portions of Zuckerberg’s interview with The Verge, but don’t expect to come away with any clearer understanding of the Metaverse. Hopefully, some real world examples would be helpful, but first the components:
Given that Zuckerberg had a difficult time getting his Metaverse concept across to analysts and based on the assumptions, above here are some examples of how the metaverse might work:
Think this is still vague and farfetched? Here is an initial building block -- A hologram popping out of an iPhone!
Musing on the Metaverse
Facebook posted Q221 revenues of $29B up 56% Y/Y. Net income more than doubled Y/Y to $10.4 billion. Monthly active users of 2.9B rose 7.4% from the same period last year, while daily active users gained 6.7% to 1.91B (25.1% of the world’s population). To put this in context, the number of Facebook daily users is 145% of the world’s developed countries’ population. Zuckerberg took this opportunity to announce a plan to spending billions on a metaverse where users can interact with each other virtually. Wall Street is skeptical. Analysts asked how much it'll cost, when there'll be a return on investment and how much control Facebook can have over all the pieces of a virtual universe. “The metaverse is a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces," he says. "You can kind of think of this as an embodied Internet that you're inside of, rather than just looking at. We believe this is going to be the successor of the mobile Internet ... the defining quality of the metaverse is presence: creation, avatars, and digital objects." And "in addition to being the next generation of the Internet, the metaverse is also going to be the next chapter of us as a company." He launched into a discussion of three key themes: creators, commerce and "building the next computing platform" (i.e. one built on AI, machine learning and VR).
- He notes video is becoming the primary way in which users interact with the platform: It now accounts for almost half of all time spent on Facebook, and Reels (its TikTok-clone video feature) is the largest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram, Zuckerberg says.
- On-demand video, such as on the Facebook Watch tab, is also growing faster, he says.
- Zuckerberg said Facebook will keep creator tools free to use through 2023, and that it's investing $1B in creators across Facebook and Instagram and is working its way down the stack to build world class services at every layer of commerce."
In this week’s Musing VR/AR section, we provide portions of Zuckerberg’s interview with The Verge, but don’t expect to come away with any clearer understanding of the Metaverse. Hopefully, some real world examples would be helpful, but first the components:
- The most comprehensive smart glasses imaginable, with a micro display that meets all the specs Zuckerberg can only dream about
- Having conversations with the dead – not zombies but real people, look up the 60 Minutes segment on interviews with alive and dead holocaust survivors
- Massive computing power in the cloud or whatever replaces it
- Google Search on steroids
- 6G: 100 times faster than 5G with latencies in the nsec range
- Cameras and listening device everywhere
- AI in an omnipresent and omnipotent state
Given that Zuckerberg had a difficult time getting his Metaverse concept across to analysts and based on the assumptions, above here are some examples of how the metaverse might work:
- Someone is walking down the street and sees another person with a similar shape wearing an outfit that she thinks might look good on her. Her avatar appears wearing the outfit and initiates an immediate search for the source and lowest price, she orders it, and the outfit is delivered before she returns home along with her groceries, which her avatar picked out.
- A product marketing exec wants to know details on a specific panel, companies that produce it, current inventories, the cost, and the potential market. Instead of asking DSCC and buying a report, the info is immediately delivered in a useable and DSCC is credited with a payment.
- You are interested in a stock and want to find learn of potential. Your Avatar has a conversation with the CEO, CTO and CFO, where you ask and receive answers to all of your questions. Then you have another avatar meeting with analysts and critics. Purchasing the stock would be done by a virtual Robin Hood and settlement is immediately using crypto currency
- You are having difficulties programming a quantum computer, so you get to have a meeting with IBM programmers, who help debug the program and explain the parameters of the software. Perhaps programming will be an arcane concept, so this example is irrelevant
Think this is still vague and farfetched? Here is an initial building block -- A hologram popping out of an iPhone!
The Metaverse could disintermediate the display industry as we know it!
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