The Bullet No.9 Meta Thinking.
TL;DR The Metaverse already exists and Facebook are right to focus on it, but that may not be enough to win.
It seems everyone has an opinion on the renaming of Facebook last week to Meta, (note the rename is at a company level and not the app). Seeing as there is also a connection with crypto, I thought this would be a good place to air mine:
1. What is the Metaverse anyway?
Facebook have renamed themselves Meta to focus the company on building what they see as the future of the internet and where people will spend increasing amounts of time, the Metaverse. There’s no set definition right now for the Metaverse and it means different things to different people. I heard a description recently from Andrew Steinwold that I think simplifies it well, “the Metaverse is a virtual environment where people live, work and play”. The film Ready Player One, based on the book by Ernest Cline, gives a vision of what it could look like in a place called The Oasis, a virtual reality world where people spend most of their day. It’s a great film, with some cracking pop culture references that appeal to the 80s kid in me, I highly recommend.
2. It already exists
In my view, we already live in digital worlds. I’d argue that staring at our phones, sending and receiving messages, using social media, zoom calls, and watching videos online, is engaging in a digital environment used for life, work and play. It’s just a rudimentary form, compared to virtual reality headsets or bodysuits that offer a deeper level of immersion. Although you never know, you could already be in a Metaverse, reading this letter. Elon Musk once famously opined that we could be living in a simulation, like the Matrix, but we just don’t know it.
3. We’ve been here before
Back in 2007, I remember everyone in marketing getting excited about Secondlife, which was released in 2003 and still exists today. It’s an early pioneer of a virtual reality world, or Metaverse, and people have made a living there, buying “land”, selling products and the like. As technology has moved on these worlds have got richer and more life-like, and the possibilities of what we can do there are limited only by our imaginations. The game Fortnite has offered a more recent example, where Travis Scott performed a virtual concert for gameplayers back in 2020. I don’t see the Metaverse as being a single place, more a collection of different experiences that will eventually interconnect with one another, but the key thing is that it’s already here.
4. An appetite for disruption
Facebook famously pivoted from a desktop/website based experience to mobile/app when they saw consumers move there. They have a good track record of adapting when they need to and it’s one thing that’s kept them so successful to date. However, the next disruption could be more decentralised in nature and for a company that has grown through the power of centralisation, particularly of our data, and shown little regard for any negative consequences that may bring, it’s remains to be seen if they have the appetite to truly disrupt themselves in a way that gives up control. Someone else trying to disrupt his business but with much less noise is Jack Dorsey at Twitter. For a few years now Jack has talked about decentralising Twitter completely under a project called Bluesky. 2 competing companies, with 2 different approaches to technology developments that threaten the status quo. It’s going to be fascinating to follow them both and see how it plays out.
5. Where crypto comes in
Meta have been working on a crypto currency of their own for years. It was initially called Libra but seeing as they love a name change, it now goes by the name Diem. From what we know about the project so far, it will be a centralised currency that Meta control. Development has been secretive, although Meta is currently testing a crypto wallet in Guatemala called Novi, so it’s something they’re clearly committed to. But do we really want a company controlling our money in a virtual world, especially one with surveillance at its core and a dubious record for consumer protection? Perhaps they’ll learn from the past, one can only hope. Zuckerberg’s founder letter for Meta said “Privacy and safety need to be built into the metaverse from day one. So do open standards and interoperability. This will require not just novel technical work — like supporting crypto and NFT projects in the community — but also new forms of governance.” On the face of it, it looks as though they’re aware of the need to act differently, but they may already be too late.
6. They are not alone
In my view, making Facebook a Metaverse focused company is the right thing to do, but it may not go far enough. It’s clear that people are spending ever more amounts of time in increasingly immersive digital environments and the trend is likely to continue as technology keeps improving. If Meta is to keep itself as one of the leading technology companies, it needs to keep ahead of anything that might disrupt its current business, but there are others already playing this game, who are not constrained by a legacy business model, scrutiny of regulators, shareholder demands and a patchy history of missteps. Then you also have the core competitors like Amazon, Twitter, Google, already making moves but with much less fanfare. A name change alone won’t make them successful.
7. I don’t use Facebook or Instagram
It’s at this point I should confess I don’t use Facebook or Instagram. I have accounts for both of them, but they’ve been dormant for several years now. I used to think being active on all social platforms was a must for anyone working in marketing in order to understand the products better and their implications for marketers. However, I found keeping up with all of them too much of a drain on time and effort, so when the Cambridge Analytica story broke, it was a good excuse for me to opt out of those platforms. I can still understand their role in marketing by keeping up with the latest research and tools. After all, I’ve yet to watch the latest episodes of Billions, but that doesn’t stop me knowing that lots of people of a certain demographic have and it might be a good idea to place an ad in the break if I’m trying to speak to that audience.
A couple of closing thoughts this week. Firstly, a Metaverse fuelled future could make the issues brought about by social media, that we’re dealing with today, look tame. A world where you can be anyone you like, and do anything you like, in an anonymous way, is surely a dreamland for bad actors looking to take advantage of others. How we deal with that as a society is going to be a huge challenge. The second, I’ll leave for the always brilliant Marketoonist: