Facebook's Metaverse: Opportunity or Threat?
Metaverse became the talk of the town because Facebook changed its company name to Meta and announced that it would invest $100 billion in 2021 to build the metaverse. What is the metaverse and how will it change the way we socialize, work and do business? What are the good and bad sides of the metaverse and how should companies respond to this metaverse?
One important thing, the metaverse does not currently exist. The metaverse exists only in the imagination of visionary entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and his friends. The metaverse, if it actually materializes, will have the potential to change the way we live, socialize, work, do business and many things including how capitalism works. For companies the metaverse opens up endless possibilities to make profits in previously unimaginable ways. For creative industry players, especially in the field of digital design and gaming, this is a land of hope that is wide open for you. we'll cover all of that in a moment. Now let's talk about what is a metaverse?
Get to know the Metaverse
Mathew Ball, a venture capitalist and author of Metaverse Primer, defines a metaverse as a vast network of three-dimensional virtual worlds that operate in real-time and persistently and support the continuity of identities, objects, histories, payments and rights, in which the world is experienced simultaneously by the same user. unlimited.
OK, maybe this definition of a metaverse from Facebook is easier to understand. A metaverse is a set of virtual spaces that you can create and explore with other people who are not in the same physical space as you. Have you seen the movie Ready Player One by Steven Spielberg. That's the metaverse, or the popular fortnite game, or Roblox, you know, right? Children often play those online games. Well, the metaverse is like Roblox, You play an avatar that you create to live and interact with other Avatars in a virtual world, but the difference is that instead you play it by looking at your gadget screen.
Metaverse is played using a VR (Virtual Reality) device that makes you really feel you are in the virtual world. Another difference with Roblox is that the appearance and design of the Roblox world is very simple. Metaverse will be able to present a three-dimensional world that resembles the real world and could be even better.
A more concrete parable, imagine if suddenly a new planet was discovered not far from Earth. The beauty that we can find on this planet can only be limited by our imagination and all human beings whoever they can live on that planet, so big companies like Facebook are vying for control of as much land as possible in this newly discovered world and on that land they built a dream city, anyone can be whatever he wants. Could do things they couldn't do on earth.
Partnering with many development companies, they build various public facilities: there are malls, there are offices, recreation areas, schools and then sell land shanties, houses, apartments and also office space. They present the latest technology and world concepts that are so stunning. All in order to lure as many people as possible to want to live in the dream city they created.
The Metaverse is more or less like that, only the difference is that the planets and cities are virtual. Being in the Virtual Realm that we can access via VR devices. Although virtual, the experiences you experience in the virtual world are Real Time and permanently the same as our lives. Everything we used to do in the real world we can do there even more: including doing business and a career to make money.
In the metaverse, you can buy land, houses, clothes, cars or digital art and get legal ownership certificates for those digital assets. That asset or item will always be there and will remain yours as long as you don't sell it to anyone else. If there are many of your goods that other people are interested in buying, then the price of your goods may be high in value in the market.
Metaverse Economy
Why is Facebook so passionate about building a metaverse?, partly because it's such a cool idea. Partly because the metaverse will be a new, unlimited field to make as much money as possible. Sam Peurifoy, a 27-year-old PhD from Colombia University, left his job at Goldman Sachs to pursue his fortune by playing a video game called Axie Infinity, a blockchain-based online game that uses crypto money as a medium of exchange. To play Peurifoy buy three monsters called Axies for 500 US dollars.
Then Peurifoy's Axie will be pitted against another player's Axie with battle capital in the Pokemon game. The winner will get smooth love potions that can be used to breed Axie. The more often you win, the more Axies are born. These new Axies can be used by Peurifoy to compete again, so they can get more smooth love potions or they can also be sold to other players for approximately $150 US per Axie.
This is the economic value with a capital of $ 500 dollars Peurifoy can breed a lot of Axie and sell it at a profit that doubles. People like Peurifoy are certainly smart. They want to make a lot of money, while knowing their limitations, they start hiring other players who don't have the capital to play on their behalf. In addition, they also provide capital to other players in exchange for profit sharing for every win they get.
In this way, the amount of wealth that Peurifoy can accumulate is unlimited. This is a metaverse economy in an infinite world, wealth becomes unlimited. In the metaverse you can buy or rent land, build anything on it and earn money from it. You can create a virtual museum and collect fees from every visitor who comes or you can also build a mall and collect commissions from every sale that occurs in your virtual mall, you can even put billboards on the walls of your building and rent them out to brands who want to advertise.
The question is, does anyone want it? the answer is really there and it has happened now and imagine it. When billions of people have filled the metaverse like Facebook which now also contains almost 3 billion people, the price of land that you own in that metaverse will definitely soar and billboards on the walls of the mall your virtual. Yeah, it's going to be up for grabs by big brands. All that money is in it!
You are an architect, you can also sell virtual house design services on the metaverse, then work with a programmer to build the house for your client or you want to be Elon Musk! Of course you can! you can build a car factory in the metaverse and then sell those digital cars to the people who live there. For example, if you are a car manufacturer in the real world. You can make a digital version of your car, then sell it metaverse.
The NFT technology embedded in every digital asset in the metaverse ensures that it is uniquely yours, has value and can be traded.
The Evolution of Capitalism
Who will benefit the most in this metaverse?. The answer is clear: the landlords and entrepreneurs who came in early, like those who bought Bitcoin 10 years ago, are now wealthy and when the metaverse is getting more mecure and new players are getting more and more quotas, economic inequality will occur. Hundreds of thousands of people will try to open a business there and the landlords will also set a stall rental price which can be unreasonable. Millions of job seekers hope to become employees at companies owned by Peurifoy and his friends. While job vacancies are limited, demand far exceeds supply. Job seekers are forced to accept offers with low salaries. The partners are forced to accept a small profit sharing, the rich getting richer and the poor having to accept it.
Who will benefit the most from all of this? Of course he built the world. The Alpha who made all of this possible a.k.a Facebook and as the saying goes in a casino “the house always with capitalism has worked perfectly”. In a community managed by a just leader, the rules of the game will be made to build the common good that can improve the welfare of all members of the community. Unfortunately Facebook like any other bored is the engine of capitalism. The goal is only to make the maximum profit for the shareholders, so the rules will always side with the landlords, not the citizens.
Of course they are smart to play it, the rules are made and presented in such a way that it seems to favor the citizens. The business players are getting here the better at doing that. They are good at playing with our egos, provoking desires, offering pleasure that we find difficult to get in the real world and without realizing it we hand over our money, not once but many times even we leave our wallets with them, inviting them to take its contents regularly so that they continue to quench his thirst.
Perhaps this is an exaggeration in describing the trappings of capitalism that can occur in the metaverse. For balance, look at the metaverse from a different perspective. For some people, the metaverse is a YouTube libertarian that allows everyone to act and carry out economic activities without any intervention and manipulation from the government. They see a metaverse that will most likely run on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies will be able to present a true free market.
Everything goes back to the pure market mechanism. This they believe will provide true justice for all economic actors. David Cameron former British Prime Minister once said “I believe that open markets and free enterprise are the best imaginable forces for enhancing human well-being and happiness, they are the engines of progress, generating business and innovation that lift people out of poverty and provide people with opportunities, when it works well open markets and free enterprise can really promote morality.”
In a libertarian perspective, the metaverse will encourage free trade with fair competition to be created. Everyone is treated equally and only high quality products can win there.
Land of Hope for (almost) All
Anyone, including small companies, can become landlords in this new world, if they enter early and position themselves well, just like in the past when entrepreneurs from developed countries sailed to explore the oceans to discover new continents. They then controlled the lands there. They also become rich, even though in their original country they could be nothing.
So companies that have big visions like Facebook will definitely try to get in first so they can control the largest land and become rulers in the new world. That's what made Facebook dare to invest heavily into building this metaverse. Because therein lies the future of capitalism. Metaverse takes a while before it actually becomes a reality.
However, not a few companies have started to "steal the start" so that later they can gain profits in the new world. One of them is the Wir Group, a native Indonesian company led by Michael Budi. Currently the Wir group is collaborating with the company: Singapore Myrepublic to create various virtual spaces from markets to museums along with Avatars for users to use in their actions and transactions in the metaverse.
In fact, we don't have to wait until the metaverse becomes a reality. Even now we have seen our children spend more time playing in the virtual world with friends from various countries than playing with neighboring children in the house complex. Not only that, some of us also feel happier living on the media timeline. socially than in our everyday real lives.
Seeing that, it seems like the metaverse will come sooner than we thought. The irony is that while the world is moving rapidly into the future, many companies are still living in the past. They kept reassuring themselves that their business would be fine and at the end of the year as usual they were busy making plans for the future based on past historical data. They insisted on holding their National Working Meeting offline because even for almost two years they still didn't feel comfortable using zoom and the most futuristic topic of discussion at the meeting was how we can use social media to promote our products.
Reference: https://youtu.be/IIaEjGjdckI
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