Honestly I was offended as I would say their rebrand is cultural appropriation.
They didn't invent the "metaverse" it's a by now decades old idea you find in many, maybe even most science fiction novels. Neither is using the term meta in this context.
In some way they basically try to forceful appropriate this to redefine it as a Facebook thing.
But this might also be why they might fail!
Because the term metaverse is already used in such a generic way by so many parties that it only stands for a vague "interconnected vr world" thingy, i.e. you could argue that even by now any trade mark protection law suite is already a lost cause (at least in the EU).
Similar have fun protecting Meta as a trademark for anything which is meta (like metadata, like most things in VR...).
I mean sure Apple is called Apple, but that only works because they have nothing to do with Apples...
Anyway putting that aspect aside there is another three problems with there vision:
- added values
- convenience
- accessibility
For success the added value must outclass any inconvenience especially such cause through problems of accessibility.
But for multiple of their use cases this is not the case, like e.g. the VR meeting rooms are much less convenient then voice/video calls and add hardly any value. Worse their are less accessible and might legally not be usable by any company hold to accessibility standards.
Another example would be e.g. 3d web, which died because for most use cases it added hardly any value over 2d text based web.
Similar things like slack became successful due to it being simple text based, if it would have been based around a vr room it would have flopped even if everyone has the right hardware to run it performant.
Pretty much the main important point I think Facebook would need to succeed in is to convince most people working in front of a computer that they want to work with a VR headset instead, but who wants to ware a VR headset 8 hours a day.
Honestly I was offended as I would say their rebrand is cultural appropriation.
They didn't invent the "metaverse" it's a by now decades old idea you find in many, maybe even most science fiction novels. Neither is using the term meta in this context.
In some way they basically try to forceful appropriate this to redefine it as a Facebook thing.
But this might also be why they might fail!
Because the term metaverse is already used in such a generic way by so many parties that it only stands for a vague "interconnected vr world" thingy, i.e. you could argue that even by now any trade mark protection law suite is already a lost cause (at least in the EU).
Similar have fun protecting Meta as a trademark for anything which is meta (like metadata, like most things in VR...).
I mean sure Apple is called Apple, but that only works because they have nothing to do with Apples...
Anyway putting that aspect aside there is another three problems with there vision:
- added values - convenience - accessibility
For success the added value must outclass any inconvenience especially such cause through problems of accessibility.
But for multiple of their use cases this is not the case, like e.g. the VR meeting rooms are much less convenient then voice/video calls and add hardly any value. Worse their are less accessible and might legally not be usable by any company hold to accessibility standards.
Another example would be e.g. 3d web, which died because for most use cases it added hardly any value over 2d text based web.
Similar things like slack became successful due to it being simple text based, if it would have been based around a vr room it would have flopped even if everyone has the right hardware to run it performant.
Pretty much the main important point I think Facebook would need to succeed in is to convince most people working in front of a computer that they want to work with a VR headset instead, but who wants to ware a VR headset 8 hours a day.