wither the metaverse?

An interesting piece from thestreet.com talking about Meta’s investments beyond “core business” (FB, Insta, What’s app). Like everyone else, Meta is scrambling to sort out the generative AI (gAI) boom and impact. Given the ridiculous amounts of data that Meta collects, they can train models until the cows come home. To what end is up for discussion, but apparently Reality Labs – home to a lot of the metaverse development – will lose discretionary funding (rumored to be about 20% of their spending) in favor of chasing gAI.

So is the metaverse dead? Nope – it’s already here and will continue to evolve. Perhaps this is actually good for the metaverse (small m) while being problematic for the Metaverse (big M). The concept and execution of the metaverse will go far beyond a single company, so the thought of a single tech giant “owning” the metaverse really was a non-starter despite what some folks thought. Besides, gAI will be a necessary part of the metaverse as it grows, so Meta actually will be continuing to develop, just not specific VR “social” implementations. Given their demos the past few years, perhaps that also is a good thing…

Next watch for what Apple announces in the AR space. It has been rumored for years and seemed like 2023 would be the launch but not clear they have it right yet. Even if they get it “right”, like other Apple products it will take a few cycles to get things dialed in. Development can only tell you so much – millions of users often give you a different story.