No, the metaverse is not dead - it's inevitable

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Over the past few weeks, many people have asked me the same question: Is the Metaverse dead? This pessimism is not surprising, given that Meta stock has lost more than half of its value since the official announcement of its strategic pivot to the metaverse. Adding insult to injury, last week Meta announced major company-wide layoffs, raising fear throughout the industry.

Trying my best to be objective, I view Meta's current difficulties as a reflection of its legacy business rather than an indication of the failure of its metaverse strategy. I think it will be another year or two before we can truly predict whether Meta will succeed in this space, or whether other big players will emerge as the true leaders of the Metaverse.

My biggest concern is that the general public still doesn't know what the "metaverse" is and how it will benefit society. You'd think that would be clear by now, but even simple metaverse definitions are hard to come by. Personally, I blame influencers in the Web3 space for creating confusion, describing the metaverse in terms of blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs. These are deeply useful technologies but no more relevant to the metaverse than 5G, GPS, or GPUs.

The metaverse is not about specific infrastructure elements.

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I'm pointing this out because of an experience I had at the Metaverse Summit in San Jose two weeks ago. During the event, I participated in a panel discussion on the topic of "Metaverse Marketing". Leaders of many major brands were present. To my surprise, no one mentioned issues that I would consider relevant to marketing in the metaverse. Instead, they mostly talked about NFTs and strategies to attract "web3 natives" and "degens". It's not the metaverse. If the industry doesn't fend off this lingering confusion, it will continue to struggle.

Repeat after me: the metaverse is not about NFTs.

Instead, the Metaverse is about transforming the way we humans experience the digital world. Since the dawn of computing, access to digital content has been primarily through flat media viewed in...