Week in Review - The 'metaverse' is meaningless

Saturday, October 30, 2021 • By Lucas Matney

Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review!

Last week, I dug into the pivotal week that Facebook had ahead of them. This week, we’re digging into the vision that “Meta” has ahead of it.

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the big thing

Zuckerberg did an awfully good job convincing people to wonder aloud what the metaverse was this week. I had a handful of people ask me what it was and why it was important. I had a much easier time answering the first part of that question than the second part.

Facebook renamed itself Meta this week because they want to be seen as a “metaverse” company, but they are hilariously early in that process, with almost nothing to show for it yet besides a few beta apps and a lot of bold keynote rhetoric. I’m no metaverse expert, but one thing I do know is that the metaverse is a collective and that Zuckerberg is going to have to convince an awful lot of developers to embrace their vision while also convincing consumers to buy new hardware and change how they interact online. That sounds tougher than anything Facebook has managed to accomplish before.

Ultimately, most of what people say about the metaverse today is meaningless; digital worlds have existed for a long time as have in-game economies that people could make money from. Second Life is a couple decades old and while it never scaled to billions of users, the bones were there. The metaverse conversation has popped up again in the past several months largely because of the connection to crypto platforms that argue that coins and NFTs will allow for deeper, more sophisticated online economies to take off, something that will inspire a digital land grab. I definitely buy certain elements of this, but I find it harder to believe that this will immediately lead to entirely new “metaverse” platforms rather than sparking mega game publishers to build fairly insular crypto economies for their existing titles. I would imagine you’ll be trading crypto-backed currencies inside Grand Theft Auto before millions of people rush to colonize the lands of crypto-native platforms like Decentraland.

It’s a hard lesson that’s been learned again and again by founders in the AR/VR and crypto worlds — being first to a new technology doesn’t sell products, engaging experiences do, and frankly it’s easier to integrate new tech than to build something engaging. That being said, plenty of popular experiences don’t want to rock the boat, and fail to adopt new tech, which leaves big opportunities for native platforms to overtake them. There are plenty of reasons to believe that Facebook will have a tough time building a metaverse, even at their scale, and even with their steadfast focus on the goal. The company has yet to build a social VR app that succeeded, heavily due to the small size of the VR user base but also due to the fact that social apps that are just about meeting up in digital spaces are a hard sell in a world where most top games already deliver great social experiences.

Meta has a lofty goal ahead of it; if they succeed they’ll probably be a $10 trillion company, but if they don’t, well maybe another corporate rebrand will be in order.

Image Credits: Facebook

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other things

Here are a few stories this week I think you should take a closer look at:

Tesla, the trillionaire
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a few months, you’ve gotten to witness a handful of companies cross over into the trillion-dollar club, but few have done so with the style Tesla has. The electric car company is trading at quite the premium when it comes to the money it’s bringing in.

Tesla has turned into quite the meme stock, but as the value accrues, one wonders whether there’s any stock on the public markets that would tank quite as hard if the resident CEO were to take a step back. Elon Musk’s cult of personality is a major sell to investors who see him as a visionary who will help the company realize its sky-high market cap.

Leaked photo shows off new Facebook smartwatch
An image of Facebook/Meta’s next hardware device just leaked and it’s a new take on the smart watch, embedding a camera into the display (alongside a notch). The image was found inside the app which Facebook uses to link its Ray Ban Stories to a user’s phone, suggesting there could be a connection between the two devices down the road.

Facebook’s AR/VR hardware strategy is coming together in a more cohesive way, and while none of their products are likely slam-dunk mainstream hits, they’ve established a path forward. Facebook acquired CTRL Labs a couple years back, which was pioneering wrist-worn AR input, something that Facebook/Meta likely has their own aims for as they prepare to release future AR devices.

Zuckerberg takes veiled shots at Apple
In Zuckerberg’s lengthy metaverse keynote, the CEO took the opportunity to talk about how the next computing platform will differ from what Apple and Google have built on Android, saying that existing stakeholders have stifled innovation on those platforms. “Most of all, I’ve come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things and holding back the entire internet economy,” Zuck said.

Facebook insists that no one will “own” the metaverse, but there’s clearly a platform opportunity that the company wants to own, one which combines their hardware platform with a connective platform tissue on which the metaverse runs. Also, for all of Zuck’s harsh words about Apple’s App Store policies, the policies of the Quest Store aren’t any more relaxed — just carried out at a smaller scale.

Image Credits: Meta

added things

Some of my favorite reads from our newly renamed TechCrunch+ subscription service this week:

The Bowery Farming TC-1
“…While dozens of vertical farms have sprouted in the past decade, few have attracted the amount of attention that Manhattan-headquartered Bowery Farming enjoys. Founded in 2015, the company has raised nearly $500 million in venture capital — most recently at a $2.3 billion valuation — and is expanding from two experimental grow facilities and two production facilities to multiple scaled-up production hubs as it serves its leafy greens to customers at more than 850 grocery stores. The question the company asks is simple: Can it bring the newest and most innovative technologies to bear on civilization’s oldest and most optimized industry?…”

Robinhood’s nasty quarter
“…The results were lackluster, leading to the company trading sharply lower this morning. Robinhood greatly missed expectations, and its guidance was far from inspiring. What happened to the company that once posted sequential revenue gains that raised eyebrows and popped eyeballs? It’s worth a little time to understand…“

Fintech’s growing role in healthcare
“…A growing number of startups are now leveraging the fintech playbook to solve a key part of the healthcare problem — the shifting dynamics between patients, payers and providers, and how payments and related electronic health records (EHRs) flow between them. Not only is the onus of payments and data flow moving from payers to patients, but providers are now facing a monumental shift to new billing and engagement models, requiring new technologies and platforms to help with the change…”