FACEBOOK METAVERSE FOR BUSINESS OR PLEASURE?

Facebook is always in the news, whether for election manipulation and data misuse or for manipulating video views to fool businesses and make more money.

The social media platform’s most recent interest move was the name change from Facebook to Meta as it transitioned to a metaverse company.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is enthusiastic about the Metaverse, its much-hyped venture is off to a bumpy start.

Horizon Worlds was made available to regular users and VR enthusiasts last month, allowing anyone to join the bandwagon that many predict will be the next big thing in IT after social media. However, there have been a number of concerns around the debut, including claims of toxic conduct and sexual harassment.

Experts have warned that hyper-realistic 3D avatars in the virtual world could badly affect the body image of young people in the real world, and the Metaverse is already encountering headwinds from a variety of directions.

an announcement regarding our new name from our founder @zackshutt pic.twitter.com/I7tofqPa6Z

— META PCs 🖥🖱 (@METAPCs) October 28, 2021

That hasn’t stopped a slew of corporations from getting on board the Metaverse bandwagon, with Microsoft, NVIDIA, Snap, Roblox, Tencent, and a slew of others already working on their own digital worlds.

Last month, Meta/Facebook announced a series of virtual reality performances in the Metaverse, featuring rapper Young Thug, DJ David Guetta, and EDM combo ‘The Chainsmokers.’

The three performances were staged as scheduled during the last week of December, but although being absolutely free, none of them attracted the crowds that Meta had hoped for.

When checked on January 5, Young Thug’s performance had about 125,000 views, whereas Guetta’s had only 906,000.

The Chainsmokers’ show appears to be offline at the moment for unknown reasons.

The low turnout at the free Metaverse concerts contrasts sharply with the tens of millions of spectators who tuned in to Travis Scott’s Fortnite concert last year.

It’s unclear why these concerts drew such a small crowd, although it could have something to do with the fact that most people are still unfamiliar with the Metaverse.

Another reason could be that most of the concerts were not designed with VR in mind.

Young Thug and The Chainsmokers reportedly only offered a 180-degree view of their performances, rather than the full 360-degree view that VR enthusiasts have come to expect. While David Guetta’s concert was a standard 2D Livestream of his performance at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Young Thug and The Chainsmokers reportedly only offered a 180-degree view of their performances, rather than the full 360-degree view that VR enthusiasts have come to expect.

Whatever the cause, the concert attendance numbers were disappointing, and Meta would know better than anybody else.

According to a news statement from the Sandbox, Snoop Dogg has increased his assets in the Metaverse after initiating the sale of his LAND digital real estate.

On the Metaverse site, Snoop launched sales of 122 LANDs and 67 premium LANDs plots, as well as an auction for three OpenSea 33 ESTATES.

Three Snoop Dogg NFTs will be included in the exclusive real estate sale at Premium LANDs.

Early access passes for the ‘Snoopverse,’ which provide additional benefits and access to NFT-backed artworks, have also gone on sale.

What is the Function of Sandbox?

Creatives can buy and sell assets and game experiences utilizing NFT and blockchain-based technologies on The Sandbox, a community-based content monetization platform.

Sandbox‘s Metaverse platform employs the SAND utility token, which is built on ERC-20 Ethereum blockchain technology and has a total supply of 3 billion tokens.

Users and investors can buy digital real estate in the Sandbox Metaverse to construct experiences, such as games and NFT-backed digital assets, according to the platform’s website, with the ability to combine lands as an ESTATE. On the Sandbox Metaverse, there are currently 166,464 LANDS accessible.

Users can make money on the Metaverse through selling assets, owning land, and using the Game Maker tool to create games.

According to the website, 50 percent of all transactions on its market, including LAND sales, transaction fees, Premium NFT purchases, and subscriptions, go to the Foundation, which supports research and teaching on the Metaverse, NFTs, and $SAND, among other things.

Snoop Dogg has joined Outlier Ventures as a strategic member, with Canadian music musician Deadmau5, to assist entrepreneurs participating in the London-based firm’s Base Camp Accelerator program.

The Hip-Hop icon has also increased his efforts to establish and promote the Metaverse for the worldwide entertainment business and others, particularly since joining Stage11’s XR studio, where he joined a formidable lineup of musical heavyweights.

Stolen from Second Life

Many people believe that Meta stole this concept from Linden Lab. The virtual world designed by Philip Rosedale called Second Life was released on June 23, 2003 that is now officially owned by the Waterfield Group since July 9, 2020.

Second Life is a virtual, online world where users make avatars that can travel to different locations and territories (known as Sims), play role-playing games, manufacture and sell things, and interact with other Second Life inhabitants and one of them is Heathcliff Harbrough.

Harbrough started on July 30, 2009 which is considered the date of birth in Second Life. He used to have 6 sims and transformed as Dubai. He rented out locations for stores and offices. In a forum on secondlife.com, Harbrough writes that Meta stole the concept of Second Life.

Harbrough writes in the forum called “Why do I choose Second Life over Meta?“: “When the idea behind Meta was introduced I was immediately like “wait a minute, this is the concept of Second Life” but I don’t see anyone on social media mentioning it. Is this concept not copied from Linden Lab and what does Linden Lab think about this?”

SL residents have massively posted their opinions in the forum thread where by a large number have nothing positive to say about Meta like the SL avatar Tama Suki.

“As I see it, Meta is already compromised and burned before it was even born and Facebook is a satellite that is moving away from Earth’s orbit and will continue to move further and further away until it totally loses the signal.

The reasons why I doubt Meta’s long-lasting success are these:

1 – The Facebook platform sucks. It’s a redundant, clunky circus jam-packed with useless features that only serve to lag the user with intrusive advertisements and spam of all kinds. The grotesque thing is that the UI is so complex and counterintuitive that it seems to me that the average user will never really understand how to use it. I believe that Zuck’s programmers are actually sadists who are taking revenge on humanity. If they build Meta in the same way it might just look like a nightmare.

Most likely Meta after the success of the first launch (obviously it will be a success because it will be supported by a millionaire propaganda and a huge multitude of affiliated companies) will slowly become more niche than SL. The advertising customers will be thrilled, but the real target, customers and consumers, will mostly be frustrated by the difficulty in accessibility.

I think more or less the same thing happened in Second Life right? Maybe someone remembers. This is because it can only be fully enjoyed by those who have very powerful machines and connections, it will be a kind of world for the rich.

Zuck had already tried it a few years ago with the metaverse. He had created The Cloud Party. It was practically identical to Second Life but the main difference was that it was not an open world. It was a group of islands suspended in the sky completely separated from each other, nothing to do with the Second Life open world where you can even waste days to cross an entire continent created by hundreds of sims connected to each other.

So maybe I’m wrong because he probably learned a few lessons about metaverses.

2 – As I understand it, it seems that Zuck is betting a lot on that kind of scam called NFT.

I recently saw that he gladly gave an interview to a famous Youtube influencer, one of those petulant motivational scoundrels who want you to believe you can get rich by copying horrible GIFs from others or creating pathetic little JPGs and putting them on some indecent market by re-producing them as NFT.

The community of artists, the real ones and those whose work is often stolen by incapable people who believe they can get rich by reselling it in the form of NFT, is already rebelling and will not end well. So in my opinion whoever gets involved in this world will have a very bad reputation by default.

But there is more.

It is clear to many now that NFT technology is massively polluting our planet. Someone claim to create money from nothing, but in this universe it is impossible to create something from nothing, NFTs consume enormous energy and to be able to consume that type of energy they pollute the planet massively. Many have already talked about it and there are many authoritative articles that you can find around.

So it will happen that after the beating that Zuck is taking because he takes away your soul and your privacy to be able to resell it he will also be accused of destroying the planet with the sole purpose of making money.

So instead of rebuilding a new reputation by changing his name from Facebook to Meta, in my opinion he is digging his own grave. It could be that I’m wrong, we’ll see.”

Not only Second Life residents have expressed their opinion, Linden Lab wrote the following about Meta: “So, perhaps you have heard of this new thing called the metaverse? 😉 Unless you’ve been living under a rock (virtual or otherwise), you probably already know that Facebook recently changed its corporate name to Meta as they work on their own vision and version of a “metaverse.” While we appreciate that this development has super-charged interest in virtual worlds, we also know that there is genuine concern about Facebook’s plans in this space given its spotty reputation on many issues including consumer data privacy and protections. At Second Life, we’re proud that we don’t monetize, sell, or share consumer data – and we’ve been heartened to see the mainstream media reevaluate our own virtual world amidst the heightened interest in all-things-metaverse including a renewed recognition and celebration of our pioneering contributions to the concepts of virtual economies, cultures, and communities.”

Conclusion

Dilemaradio supports the views of Second Life avatars in the forum thread by Heathcliff Harbrough. It is obvious that Meta is not an original concept and Facebook’s reputation seems irreparable because most people don’t want anything to do with Meta. Watch the video above where people describe why Second Life is so special to them.

It’ll be interesting to watch whether things accelerate up this year with more awareness. Meta still has a long way to go before the Metaverse can truly fulfill Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition. It would be interesting if artists choose Second Life. Probably SL is known for good parties!