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Happy Saturday! There are a few notes in the house. I am excited about the launch of Chain Reaction. On Tuesday, April 26th, the TechCrunch+ team will host a social media space with Silicon Valley-based attorney and columnist, Sophie Alcorn, who will discuss immigration-related issues and answer questions relevant to startup founders and workers.
I think that is it. To work now!
The term " metaverse" has become ubiquitous since Facebook decided to chart a new future. The term is being used by public companies in hopes of catching the wave.
I don't have a problem with companies tuning their marketing. The metaverse is what I struggle with. This newsletter said the following back in January.
The most fun that I had this week was a visit to Decentraland. In short, I was in edit and trying to distract myself so that I wouldn’t bother the editing team while they worked, so I fired up the social-crypto environment – metaverse, in other words – and went for a tour. Rocking a mohawk and some pretty cool pants I managed to get lost, visit an NFT gallery, and fail to gain access to an arena.
Is the metaverse a social-crypto environment? Maybe that's part of it, but it doesn't feel like a complete definition.
The definition of the term came up this week in a piece that was written for TechCrunch+ about how artists are using cryptocurrencies to connect with fans and make money.
Meta‘s version of the metaverse consists mainly of virtual reality or augmented reality for friends to interact with one another, while web3’s take on the metaverse is more centered around how users will experience the internet in a digital world.
The good thing about this particular piece of music is that it is correct. There are several definitions of what the metaverse is. Anyone working with digital communities, or really digital assets more generally, can claim the label in this gray area. The result is that everything is the metaverse, which is the same thing as saying that nothing is.
There are two main thrusts towards building the metaverse. The Meta approach seems to start from the perspective of personal representation inside a persistent, video-game like environment. This means that the metaverse is more open-ended and more open to continued expansion. The more web3 approach considers digital assets that can be seen as an extension of one's self as the metaverse, or at least part of it. For example, how you want to display yourself in a digital environment. That sort of thing.
It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 There is a place where you and I can keep our digital goods and have them recorded on a ledger.
It is not possible to build that vision at the moment. Why? Because there isn't a way to build an MMORPG atop the blockchain, and companies that can build such a platform don't want to allow for the creation and management of their own assets, as it would limit their ability to rip value out of their game.
The tension between the two systems is useful to note, as it appears to be keeping the metaverse from reach. It is easy to come up with a way forward. For example:
Is that compelling? If that isn't the case then we need to completely rewrite what we mean when we say the word. It's as close as I can get without dropping all current definitions and starting over.
Good luck, Facebook!
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