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Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#131

Post by _Understated_ »

I've often wondered if Mark Zuckerberg has anyone in his inner corporate circle that is willing to say "no" to him.

Meta seems like there was a wall of post-it notes in Zuck's office with a bunch of ideas to stop FB from becoming MySpace and the dart he threw landed on this one.

My gut tells me that Meta is dead in the water but with the billions that FB have in their war chest I wouldn't bet against it completely, however, the fact it requires a headset, a massive source of friction, will restrict the audience.

I dunno... seems like Zuck is living in a fantasy world here.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#133

Post by ahevia »

shoto_io wrote: post #130

I think metaverse concepts/companies can only bet successful if they fulfill there key criteria that all products need to have: 1. It's gotta be useful (Jobs to done/value/utility whatever you want to call it) 2. It's gotta make me feel good/excited, it has to be fun ("emotional value" if you want) 3. It's gotta be socially acceptable ("what do others think of me if I use this thing?") My take is: It is unclear how a…

Your 3rd point is really important and often overlooked. Explains why Facebook/Meta is going through such lengths to begin to fix its image.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#134

Post by meheleventyone »

The metaverse is noise.

The interesting long term stuff that will come out of this is computing more integrated into your whole life with AR. This is going to need a more networked, spatially aware, OS like abstraction than we’ve had to date. The scary part of that is FB making the play to own it and presumably all the data that can be harvested by being implicitly jacked into your entire life.

Apple are presumably working on the same thing for the same reasons but want you jacked into their ecosystem instead.

I believe the net result of what we’ll get is several competing walled gardens with interop at the app level as we see with phones these days.

The Web3 side of this is a mix of vultures taking easy money, well meaning people without backing and VC backed companies preaching decentralisation but offering themselves up either as middlemen or the beginning of another platform with the attendant lock-in. It primarily seems to be a way to get out of the rent seeking world of platforms into a rent seeking world for everything.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#135

Post by jl6 »

Are there any interesting Long Bets being made about the future success or failure of the metaverse?

I could imagine making some money on the following: “by 2030, the number of VR users of the metaverse will be less than 1% of the number of users of other social media apps”.

(Unless they pull some definitional stunt like saying “you used AR once on the Facebook app therefore we are counting you as a metaverse user”).

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#136

Post by ravenstine »

I would not take marketing around things like VR and AR very seriously because nobody knows whether any of them will catch on, and their track record isn't very good. Oculus, for the most part, is a niche. A lot of people have an Oculus but it's primarily for games, and it hasn't reached the level where everyone's gotta have one.

Only time can tell whether Metaverse has something that Second Life did not. My guess is that it will be considered a joke in 5 short years, but I don't actually know. Overall, I think Silicon Valley is overestimating people's willingness to wear headsets and paddles for extended periods of time. Just because 12 year old boys will do it doesn't mean that everyone else wants to.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#137

Post by mabbo »

_Understated_ wrote: post #131

I've often wondered if Mark Zuckerberg has anyone in his inner corporate circle that is willing to say "no" to him. Meta seems like there was a wall of post-it notes in Zuck's office with a bunch of ideas to stop FB from becoming MySpace and the dart he threw landed on this one. My gut tells me that Meta is dead in the water but with the billions that FB have in their war chest I wouldn't bet against it completely, h…

Huh, that's a neat idea. What if Zuck is this generation's George Lucas?

For context, after the success of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, it's said that Lucas surrounded himself with yes-men who agreed with whatever he said. Anyone who wasn't one of those didn't last long in his inner circle.

The end result was "Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace". There's an hour-long review video by "Mr Plinkett"[0] that dives into the all the major issues of the film, along with some honestly-not-great humour (imho) but at the end it really explains what the problem was: Lucas had absolute control, and everyone did what he said. And if the original Star Wars had been that way it would have been a disaster.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgWcNsdmoyE&t=3677s (The whole video is good, but linking directly to the important bit I mentioned).

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#139

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #138

I kinda view TikTok, Instagram, etc as part of a metaverse already - it's all basically fake online personas in one way or another.

Underrated point - social media turns everyone into their own exaggerated avatar.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#140

Post by rswail »

I have a friend that just got an Oculus, she is early 40s, found out about it via online zoom yoga classes and now uses it for exercise, as well as gaming, especially gaming with friends and even actually meeting because it is more comfortable than just the 2D nature of zoom.

So I can see it growing. I think AR has a better chance than full VR to be the game changing technology longer term, especially considering things like AR Facetime and equivalent.

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