Metaverse a ‘Huge Gamble’ for Zuckerberg: Business Expert

In this illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on Oct. 28, 2021, a person watches on a smartphone Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveil the META logo. Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is a huge gamble on the part of the tech giant to recapture declining user numbers, according to Prof. Barney Tan at the University of New South Wales.

Tan, also head of the School of Information Systems and Technology Management, said what Zuckerberg’s company Meta is proposing is to develop a virtual world of “unprecedented sophistication and scale” that will attempt to mesh virtual and physical realities together.

“Its prospects of success depend on how many complementary service providers, co-developers, and users they are able to attract into its eco-system because Meta cannot do everything on its own,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.

“It is certainly helpful that it is a company as big as Meta spearheading the move into the Metaverse, but at the same time, Meta does not have the best of reputation among tech firms.”

“There are many who have expressed the concern that Meta will use behavioural data from the Metaverse for marketing purposes. The key to attracting these [tech firms] is making sure that there is high value and low costs, or risks in participation—the bigger this ratio is, the better.”

However, Tan noted that there were “easier ways” to arrest Facebook’s declining user numbers.

“They could, as they have done in the past, acquire new and interesting social media platforms, or imitate and innovate on what other popular social media platforms are offering.”

Capturing the Youth

Meta is endeavouring to create a virtual world to capture more of the youth audience that is opting out of its platform and instead moving to apps like the Chinese-backed TikTok. The Meta-owned Instagram even adopted features of the app.

Metaverse is reminiscent of the earlier online platform Second Life which allowed users to create avatars to live out a “second life” in a virtual world.

The platform will attempt to build on this concept and integrate the individual’s experience more deeply with billions being invested into the project and developments in virtual reality sets.

However, there have been questions over the positive or negative impact of a wide-scale Metaverse engaging millions of people, with some experts pointing to already prevalent problems such as online bullying and addiction—an “opium for the masses.”

Jason Miller, the founder of the social media app Gettr, shared a similar assessment.

“It seems to be a computerised extension of identity politics,” he previously told The Epoch Times. “‘Hey, I’m going to live online and have this different person or version of who I am. By the way, ‘I can go and buy things when I’m online to make my online person cooler and different.’”

“It’s not real life, and I think there’s a certain point where you start getting into transhumanism and all kinds of weirdo stuff. It’s not that big of a leap,” he said.