Over the years it’s also picked up, through company acquisitions, technology that translates movement and thoughts into digital signals, AI for shopping and browsing, customer service chatbots, blockchain technology and more. It’s not difficult to imagine a platform where you slip on a pair of goggles and find yourself in a world designed completely by Facebook, where you can do your shopping, meet up with friends to watch a movie, do work, play games or read a book in a more immersive way than we do now with phones and PCs.
And it’s also not difficult to imagine why Facebook would want to be the one controlling the most dominant metaverse, as the potential for an accelerated version of its current data collection, information dissemination and advertising models is enormous.
Fortnite, with its many crossovers and in-game events, is a proto-metaverse.
On the other hand, hope remains for the development of an open metaverse, which operates more like the early internet. Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games, which makes Fortnite, told The Washington Post last month that brands have had enough of being dictated to by the likes of Facebook and Apple, and would champion an open alternative, which Epic is planning to build.
“A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn’t going to run ads. They’re going to drop their car into the world in real time, and you’ll be able to drive it around,” Mr Sweeney said.
“And they’re going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there, and that it’s receiving the attention it deserves.”
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