from the we've-built-it-and-they-still-won't-come dept.
What's going on in the metaverse these days, you might ask. Looking at two of the biggest companies with over $1 billion valuations, one data point suggests that users may not be returning every day. According to data aggregator DappRadar, the Ethereum-based virtual world Decentraland had 38 "active users" in the past 24 hours, while competitor The Sandbox had 522 "active users" in that same time.
It's important to note that an active user, according to DappRadar, is defined as a unique wallet address' interaction with the platform's smart contract. For example, logging onto The Sandbox or Decentraland to make a purchase with SAND or MANA, each platform's respective native utility token, is counted as an "active use."
This means that DappRadar's compilation of daily "active users" doesn't count people who simply log in and interact with other users on a metaverse platform or drop in briefly for an event, such as a virtual fashion week. It also may mean that fewer transactions, like buying or selling a non-fungible token (NFT), take place on these platforms than the number of people that visit.
[...] Sam Hamilton, Creative Director at Decentraland, disputed the way DappRadar tracks daily "active users" on the platform. "DappRadar doesn't track our users, only people interacting with our contracts," he told CoinDesk, adding that the platform had 8,000 users on average per day, though he did not specify what makes an "active use" versus a more passive interaction. [...]
[...] "Imagine you only track the number of people paying for something at a cashier at a shopping mall," he said. "That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of passerbys."
In a follow-up tweet, Madrid said that measuring on-chain transactions does not capture the number of users on the platform.
[...] Beverage company Snapple's pop-up bodega in Decentraland last August sparked questions about mainstream use cases for promotional content in the metaverse. In July, skater Tony Hawk announced his virtual skatepark paired with an avatar collection in The Sandbox, which aims to bring fans from his $1.4 billion "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" video game to a new, more interactive platform. Set to run from October 19 to 23, the turnout of virtual skaters may be larger than the users purchasing Hawk's NFTs in SAND.
"In my opinion, we're leaning towards a lack of product-market fit on that side ... irrespective of their valuation," said Fleyshman.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Friday October 14 2022, @05:25AM (3 children)
and nobody came.
Because nobody could give enough of a fuck, maybe...
(Score: 5, Funny) by kazzie on Friday October 14 2022, @03:15PM (1 child)
It's for people who don't want to be seen by others: the met-averse.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @08:49AM
Sounds more like someone who has an irrational dislike of the metropolitan opera house.
Or, if in London, the police force.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 15 2022, @05:44PM
Far different than the metaverse of a quarter century ago called "Doom" and "Quake". But we didn't have binocular output devices on our faces then (except for those with eye problems). For one thing, anybody could run a server, unlike today's money-worshiping game developers. That sixty bucks (usually less, DOOM was shareware) was all you had to spend to play online as long as somebody else had a copy of the game.
There was a motorcycle metaverse called Road Rash PC on Windows 95, too, that you could play online. They renamed the modern version "Road Redemption" and after paying to download it, you have to be on Sony's paid network to play it online.
It tastes like a stale CompuServe silo. And the idiot money worshipers can't understand why nobody wants their flawed product.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snotnose on Friday October 14 2022, @06:18AM (7 children)
I'll never associate myself with Facebook, err, Meta in any way. Fuck the Zuck.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Friday October 14 2022, @08:03AM (6 children)
Has arishartus created 1000 accounts already - maybe he's doing a public service?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday October 14 2022, @12:44PM (1 child)
Nope, because it gives him a chance to get his hooks into my laptop. Hooks I quite possibly won't even notice. I suppose I could run a VM but that seems like more work than it's worth.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 16 2022, @03:27AM
My conclusion after giving Second Life a serious chance: they're all too much work to be interesting. Try First Life first.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by Anartech Systems on Friday October 14 2022, @12:58PM (1 child)
For someone you all claim to despise, you sure as hell give him a lot of airtime. No wonder he won't fuck off. He knows he has all the rent free accommodation he could ask for.
Yes, I'm that guy from IRC.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2022, @02:35PM
Laughing at Zuckerborg from afar won't make his product a hit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by helel on Friday October 14 2022, @01:08PM (1 child)
He's trying to make meta verse the name in virtual reality. Increasing the user base is the only thing he cares about at this stage. Using it in such a manner as to cost Zuck a few cents hurts him as much as everyone watching YouTube videos did google back before they made a profit.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @08:52AM
Maybe if we tarnish the name enough by associating it with failed attempts at virtual reality it would work.
Imagine someone using "dot.com" today to describe a business, it would be about as detrimental to that businesses' success.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimios on Friday October 14 2022, @08:19AM (23 children)
I've read a lot of buzzword salad articles but I've yet to understand what a Metaverse is, let alone be able to explain it to my retired parents.
The closest I've come is VRChat with cryptoscams. But that begs the question: why would normal people be interested?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Friday October 14 2022, @09:03AM (12 children)
It's really bad. Impressively so:
https://www.google.com/search?q=metaverse+zuck&tbm=isch&source=hp [google.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/09/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-puerto-rico-virtual-reality [theguardian.com]
https://nypost.com/2021/11/30/creepy-metaverse-spoof-depicts-mark-zuckerberg-as-bbq-fiend/ [nypost.com]
https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/11/its-painful-how-hellbent-mark-zuckerberg-is-on-convincing-us-that-vr-is-a-thing/ [techcrunch.com]
Make mixed AR/VR glasses compact (sunglasses form factor, not headset) and cheap, give it a few applications where it works well enough to hook people in, and then let the crowd figure out what to do with it. Grassroots rather than top-down Zuck directives.
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=57271 [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 14 2022, @11:56AM (11 children)
Maybe I am under informed, but I thought Meta was another 3D avatars simulation with virtual real estate etc. Possible new wrinkles being 3D goggle drivers and cryptocurrency transactions?
Second Life got maybe 20? hours of my attention back when it was "a thing" and we had a PS3 that had a similar gaming lobby that might have gotten one hour of attention.
I feel like some day one of these virtual environments will "go viral" the way email and browsers did in the late 1990s, but I feel like it will be a morphed outgrowth of conference calls where, instead of a real video picture with filters, there is an AI generated avatar of "you" captured when you look socially presentable, and the animation is based on either your voice, or a guided by what the camera sees. When that tech takes less than 5 minutes to do the setup captures and the result isn't in the "uncanny valley" I think it will take off, first as talking heads in video conference boxes and fairly quickly progressing into virtual meeting rooms.
I feel that Meta today is far from that viral growth potential, but that's not entirely fair since I have literally spent more time typing this than evaluating Meta. It's covered in unappealing Zuck-ick-bergs.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 14 2022, @12:16PM (2 children)
Just imagine if the pandemic had happened in 2025 instead of 2020. Everyone would be using Zuck instead of Zoom.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Friday October 14 2022, @03:16PM
Didn't Megamaid go from Zuck to Zoom?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @08:58AM
Nope. Everyone would already be in VR Chat, because that's where everyone is who has at least a passing interest in virtual avatars and pretending to be that avatar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2022, @03:50PM (1 child)
If I can't access it from a web browse then I am not using it
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 14 2022, @08:12PM
HTML5 and WebAssembly mean: pretty much everything can come at you from a webpage, at least if the SW development department has a $10M+ annual budget.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @08:56AM (5 children)
Zuck is already late for the VR viral thing. VR Chat cornered that market well over a year ago.
What kept 2nd life floating and what is now pretty much driving VR Chat's (IMO questionable) success is that a few subcultures have discovered it as "their thing" and they went with it. Winning them over is virtually impossible unless you dump a LOT of money onto the ones that really matter (good luck finding them without actually becoming part of that subculture... and good luck doing that without wanting your private shower and a lot of money to compensate for the mental scarring...), and even then it is more a question of luck than something you can force.
Zuck, you lost. Cut your losses and get lost.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 15 2022, @12:48PM (4 children)
When I say viral I mean spread like COVID, not monkeypox or Ebola. But, yes, there is some mini-cult adoption of VR out there, probably enough that the hardware will continue to be manufactured and periodically become the basis of "next big thing" hopes and dreams... Maybe some day, but I suspect that widespread adoption will come first in augmented reality Google glass type hardware (with wide artificial field of view), and avatars without tails.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @01:05PM (3 children)
But who has a use for something like that aside of people who try really, really, REALLY hard to pretend they're someone or something else?
As a gaming platform, it has a novelty factor that wears off really fast and then it's just a tedious way to play. For reference, see Wii and Kinect. And those at least didn't require a 4 digit investment.
As a telepresence device, it's cumbersome and lacks finesse.
As a tool to get work done, it fails miserably at, well, any kind of level you could possibly imagine.
So what is this good for but pretending you're some fuzzy critter or a manga character?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 15 2022, @02:43PM (2 children)
>who has a use for something like that
Every single Zoom and Teams participant who puts up a fake background? When AI can listen to your voice and animate your face accordingly, then you can be better than a static picture - without having to shave or comb your hair.
>it's cumbersome and lacks finesse
Which is why I mention Google glass... if I can put it on like a pair of "normal" eyeglasses, and then get 3D overlay images, we can "populate" a conference room with 4 people in real life, and 4 more at various remote locations around the world. I just drove in to the office today to meet-greet a colleague from Singapore. 5 of us were present in the room, and 3 more were disembodied voices sharing our presentation screen. With augmented reality (still better than it is available today in real-time, but not hard at all to imagine given what 3D animation has demonstrated for 20 years now) we would "feel" like those disembodied voices were present in the room, and perhaps I would have attended from home instead of risking my life on the highway just to go be present in a 45 minute meeting - not to mention that our colleague from Singapore might have attended the meeting remotely and saved that round-the-world trip.
>As a tool to get work done, it fails miserably
It has its niches. Aircraft mechanics who have wriggled 10' down a narrow access and need reference documentation, it's a hell of a lot easier to call it up with an on-face display than trying to manipulate a tablet in that environment.
>but pretending you're some fuzzy critter
In the late 1980s we offered to install a VCR player for my 65 year old Grandmother, we mentioned she could go to the video rental store and get all kinds of programs to watch. Her response: "Oh, I'm not into all that sort of stuff..." She worked as a hairdresser and "kept hip" through gossip with her 70+ year old clients who had definitively informed her that those video stores were full of nothing but pornography. We installed the VCR anyway and left her with a selection of country music concert tapes. She refused to even look at the covers for a week. We then put a tape in the player for her, pushed play, and left until the morning. Next day: "Can you show me how to use that thing? I kinda liked that show."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 16 2022, @07:52PM (1 child)
The whole Teams background is funny for exactly 30 seconds. Granted, some simple minds can be entertained for a whole minute by it. After that, it's just a novelty thing that nobody gives a fuck about anymore.
As for the whole "Google glass" thing, why the fuck would I want to see anyone in a meeting? I never really got that idea. If they want to be seen, put on a video and I'll ignore you later. If they don't, you think they'll invest half a second into an avatar? Your meeting will be populated by a bunch of generic avatars that sit there without a facial expression whatsoever because, guess what, people don't give a fuck about that outside of marketing, and I refuse to talk with people who have mental diseases.
As for niche markets, yes, they exist. I kinda doubt, though, that this is a market that Metastasis is aiming at, considering that they try to reach a mass market. And there is no mass market for their crap.
And for the rest, well, if you want to win people over with convenience, the whole deal necessary to get VR going today is not exactly helping you there.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 16 2022, @09:28PM
>just a novelty thing that nobody gives a fuck about anymore.
Disagree, 80% of my video streaming colleagues use it religiously to mask the chaos of their background with a more "professional" image.
Re: seeing people in meetings, our regular group never streams video, but at a certain level of management they always do. I stream video about 2% of the time, usually when "meeting" a junior colleague who felt compelled to stream video for whatever reason.
>there is no mass market for their crap
I agree, and so does the recent data.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday October 14 2022, @09:40AM
It's basically dot.com all over again. A buzzword salad supposed to somehow magically generate money, where everyone and their dog feels like they have to jump onto it to get in on the ground level before it's too late because something something magical beans profit.
The only thing I really wonder is not whether it will fail but whether the great fall will again be the Superbowl halftime event.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday October 14 2022, @11:53AM (8 children)
It's not just VR with cryptoscams. It's a VR planet that Zuck is the all-powerful god of. And if you give him enough money, he'll let you set up your own virtual thingy in it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 14 2022, @12:16PM (4 children)
Incredibly short sighted. It should be expandable to millions of "planets" each controlled by whatever person or corporation cares enough to participate.
Choose from topologies of spherical, donut or flatland, with as many levels as you like.
Transit lobbies both intra and interworld arranged as the "gods" of each world decide and agree upon. Mostly I feel like the walking and transit simulations should be minimized and direct teleportation room to room should be the norm, possibly with nested menu type of selection: 6 to 8 possible destinations at each menu level with half-ish being direct endpoints and the other half being transit rooms where you might "bump into" fellow avatars with similar interests on their way to wherever. Options for "direct destination dialing" if that's what the gods decide.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2022, @09:47PM (1 child)
It seems like:
https://www.spatial.chat/ [spatial.chat]
might already be what you've described? It was used earlier this year for a small college reunion, perhaps a couple of hundred people is a dozen different "rooms". While not perfect, it worked well enough that I had a series of video chats with a bunch of old friends I hadn't seen in years. Some one-on-one as we "wandered around the rooms" and others with small groups that assembled "organically" in another room.
For anyone interested, you might read the user comments on the link above (down a few screens).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 15 2022, @05:15PM
In a world of billions of people, most interconnected globally, it's virtually impossible to describe things that have not been tried yet.
Spatial chat sounds cool, when they figure out how to make the business model work without requiring subscription type money it might have the potential to take off...
The weird thing is, this basic tech has been available since the mid 2000s, and it feels to me like there are forces at work making it deliberately hard to implement and roll out - barriers to entry so the billions can't just go roll their own. Every so often, an insanely simple API appears making building a chat application (text, audio, video, avatars, whatever) insanely simple - but then something shifts and it's no longer cross-platform compatible the way it was at launch, half the users get locked out due to "improved security" in some ecosystem or another, etc. The most visible example I know of was: Flash video. They would have weekly updates that would break stuff, usually playing whack-a-mole security games with copyrighted content pirate streamers, but the "security" changes would incidentally screw up legitimate uses like security cameras. Oh, recent fun in that department: latest Debian (including Ubuntu 22.04) has killed RTSP support, meaning your home IP cameras no longer stream to VLC if you update to 22.04. Here and there they say "you have to recompile VLC from source to restore RTSP support under Debian post such and such revision" but... it's not that simple at all.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2022, @02:44AM (1 child)
This sounds much like the internet today where anyone can buy a domain, your browser jumps from domain to domain, you can bookmarket to go direct and the only other part is how to search for what you want. Map of the galaxy with zoom?
The problem with this is with monetization. If it is the travelling between places that generates money then the gods of this realm have an interest in making people walk. Just like the real world. Foot traffic.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 15 2022, @05:07PM
That's the thing about "transit lobbies." Take the current real world scenario of waiting for a meeting to start - often manifesting as waiting for the previous meeting in the conference room to end which isn't an issue in meta-space, but... that 5 or so minutes before a meeting where you've wound down whatever you were doing, but few if any people are present in the meeting you're going to.
So, in an artificial world, a few "meetings about to start" (hopefully related in some way) could be "located" just off of a virtual lobby. You "hang out" in that lobby, if you are so inclined, and have a chance to interact with others who also are about to go into a related meeting. Of course, if you want to be "that kind" of person, you can just teleport straight into the required meeting, but... assuming you're the first one there, you might be inclined to see what other colleagues you might bump into in the lobby, catch up for a minute or two, maybe schedule some time after you are mutually free, etc.
Our company periodically tries to fine tune meeting schedules, with decrees like: all meetings shall end on the scheduled time or earlier and shall schedule such time to be 7 minutes before the next half hour to provide time for attendees to get to their next meeting. In a virtual world, those 7 minutes become opportunity to "bump into" colleagues like in the real world. Unexpected interactions have positive value, both in actual information exchanged and also in the neuro-biological reward system. Plus, in the virtual world, when you're pressed for time or not in the mood, the unexpected interactions are entirely optional.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @09:01AM (2 children)
So.... essentially what Second Life was a quarter century ago, just with shittier graphics and you have to join the cryptoscam world? And I have to buy hardware for 1500 bucks that I can't really use for anything else sensibly?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday October 15 2022, @10:36AM (1 child)
Precisely. How is Zuck surprised it didn't catch on?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @11:33AM
Well, to him 1500 bucks isn't really money, maybe he didn't realize that he ain't the gold standard for wealth?
(Score: 3, Funny) by MIRV888 on Friday October 14 2022, @12:18PM
Flight simulators in particular are just beautiful and immersive.
Beyond that I have no idea what people would use the goggles for.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Revek on Friday October 14 2022, @01:02PM
The entry price point is way too high. Back when they were the next thing direct tv took a loss on every satellite receiver they sold. They practically gave them away to get people to subscribe. The meta verse isn't doing that and its doomed to fail as a result.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Saturday October 15 2022, @02:02AM (4 children)
The only reason Facebook took off, there were Harvard boys over there hunted by girls. He really did not get it simply because he was a moron. He still is.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2022, @02:10AM
yes. He is that mama hold me jew boy who has no clue.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 15 2022, @09:04AM (2 children)
I have that feeling increasingly more often when looking at some of the current billionaires. Wasn't it "a fool and his money..."? But then you have Musk and Zuck and Bezos who come up with ideas that the average village idiot would laugh out the room, they throw fucktons of money at those ideas only to see that money evaporate instantly ... and they still have more money, and even find bigger morons to throw their money at those harebrained ideas.
I can't help but come to the conclusion that economic success these days is 100% luck. No skill required.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2022, @10:34AM
> ...who come up with ideas that the average village idiot would laugh out the room,
It's simple really:
1. Get lucky and pick an internet winning idea (FB/PayPal/etc)
2. Let the success go to your head and surround yourself with sycophants
3. Based on 2., conclude that you are a genius and every idea you have will also be winning
...
Profit!!
Pre-Internet this played out with the founders of many innovative companies. It's very rare to get lucky and make two fortunes from two (different) good ideas...but that doesn't stop these self-made geniuses from trying.
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday October 16 2022, @01:55AM
Most people don't get how important pure luck is. Even mathematicians presented with a glass jar with black and white balls swear there is some attraction between colors. In everyday life there are people who win all the money from a casino. There are folks who win jack pot lottery more than once. The wast majority of new moneys are simple luck. Meantime in many Asian countries luck is a measure of goodness. See, they believe God gives to good folks. A Thai guy comes home after a hard day and rolls some dice to get a clue if he were good or bad during the day. Six - he repeats the next day. One - he changes his ways.
Back to science, Nassim Taleb wrote a book about how to maximize luck toward oneself. It is still a hard work. You still gonna be poor, but at least you tried. I wish I've read it 40 years ago.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.