{"id":42682,"date":"2021-12-13T16:21:38","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T16:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=90a7bdc264685085b4d003e4aff625e1"},"modified":"2021-12-13T16:21:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T16:21:38","slug":"the-business-of-the-metaverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/the-business-of-the-metaverse\/","title":{"rendered":"The business of the metaverse"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n David Howell<\/a><\/span>
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20 Dec, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Coined by renowned cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson in his seminal 1992 novel\u00a0Snow Crash<\/em>, avatars interact with each other in a shared space he dubbed the metaverse. The 2018 film\u00a0Ready Player One\u00a0<\/em>articulated, too, for many, the realisation of what the metaverse will become once we\u2019re equipped with the technology to deliver these immersive experiences.<\/p>\n

Virtual environments have existed since the inception of the web; forums and chat rooms are a form of virtual meeting place, for example. The early experiments of Jaron Lanier with\u00a0virtual reality (VR)<\/a>\u00a0pushed the concept of the metaverse into a three-dimensional space, while\u00a0Second Life\u00a0<\/em>defined how a three-dimensional virtual meeting space could work. Today, games such as Minecraft and Roblox are the latest iterations of the metaverse.<\/p>\n

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Recent incarnations of the metaverse manifest in popular games like Minecraft<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Enter Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and its ambitions to create what founder Mark Zuckerberg calls \u201cthe successor to the mobile internet\u201d. In this space, \u201cwe’ll be able to feel present \u2013 like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are\u201d. Using the company’s\u00a0Oculus VR<\/a>\u00a0headsets, combined with advanced\u00a0augmented reality (AR)<\/a>, a\u00a0Ready Player One<\/em>-like environment is promised. Not to be outdone, other companies have also detailed similar plans, most notably Microsoft with ambitions to adapt Teams to offer a more metaverse-like experience, in the form of Mesh. Despite the hype, are these new spaces actually primed for businesses to reach new heights?<\/p>\n

Always online<\/h2>\n

\u201cWelcome to Mesh for Teams,\u201d announced Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman in November, who insisted\u00a0this vision of mixed reality<\/a>, 12 years in the making, is something customers are clamouring for. Accenture, indeed, has recently created a\u00a0digital twin<\/a>\u00a0of its headquarters using Mesh with the capacity to reside 10,000 employees within this virtual space.<\/p>\n

The idea is to use existing devices to connect individuals in prebuilt spaces represented by their avatars. They hope this new space isn’t just\u00a0Microsoft Office<\/a>\u00a0on virtual steroids, but a new way of not just meeting but collaborating. For some, though, Facebook\u2019s reimagining of the metaverse is nothing short of a disaster. Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor, for example,\u00a0told\u00a0BBC News<\/em><\/a>: “It’s a bad idea and the fact we are all sitting and looking at this like it’s normal should be alarming everyone. Facebook should not be allowed to create a dystopian metaverse,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Accenture recently used Mesh to build a digital twin of its HQ, with a capacity for 10,000 participants<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

VR is in every business\u2019 future, though, according to CEO of Mesmerise, Andrew Hawke. “What we’ve seen Zuckerberg do with the metaverse is show that one of the most prominent tech companies in history just bet the farm on VR,\u201d he tells\u00a0IT Pro<\/em>. \u201cI can’t think of a more bullish signal that business will be conducted in VR than that. Hearing Zuckerberg’s words, I don’t believe it will be long before large businesses have teams dedicated to exploiting this medium.\u201d<\/p>\n