Good conversation over Philip Rosedale’s pretty surprising comments last week, positing that the Metaverse may “never be for everybody”, and that in any case, Meta/Facebook definitely shouldn’t succeed at making the Metaverse. (Well, knowing Philip, that last point isn’t all that surprising.)
“What a journey,” Alex D observes, then surveys the current state of things with an expert eye:
One thing is clear from decades of VR and virtual world product innovation (failures and successes): you can’t make people use/buy something unless it solves real ‘jobs to be done.’ No matter how much we love the connections that are unique to virtual worlds, or the immersion<>empathy correlation, the platform doesn’t solve all problems for everyone. It’s shocking that Facebook is bucking decades of Silicon Valley new product development wisdom with a top-down PR push.
When Philip says “I hope they don’t [succeed]” I read that as a statement about creativity and freedom, almost a throwback to the original vision of a beloved public utility, open, ubiquitous, one that supported unlimited expression and connection. If Facebook’s metaverse becomes ubiquitous, what does that say about what the Internet has become and who controls our experiences on it?
Worth keeping in mind that IBM devoted tremendous resources trying to solve the “jobs to be done” challenge in Second Life, even building a whole corporate campus that thousands of employees held regular meetings in, but gave up on it after a few years. (Though that virtual labor protest on IBM’s campus was fun.)
Kaylee West, longtime Metaverse advocate for education, one of the thousands of educators who used (and still use) Second Life as an education platform, echoes this “jobs to be done” challenge with a campus point of view:
As sad as it makes me to say it, none of my colleagues at the university see the metaverse (whatever form that might take) as being a “place” that that they would carry out any of their duties as academics in. It is a novelty that they are curious about, but once their initial curiosity has been satisfied they are generally not interested in returning. The same seems to hold for my students, many of who actually say they enjoy our lessons in Second Life, but mostly never return once the lessons are over. I am guessing that unless employers mandate the use of the “metaverse” for work, there won’t be widespread adoption beyond enthusiasts. I hope this won’t slow down the amazing developments going on with all of the technologies associated with the “metaverse”.
I think this may be drawing too general a conclusion from Second Life’s failure to take hold with college-level educators — contrast that, for example, with the 50 million education-related downloads related to Minecraft: Education Edition, but mainly for elementary-level educators.
Beyond that, the core problem seems to me a hidden premise that the Metaverse must become the next generation of the Internet — as opposed to part of the next generation. That, and the hidden premise that the Metaverse must be for every application, as opposed to some applications. Because like I alluded to last week, since 1 in 8 people in the entire world are already active in Metaverse-ish platforms, spending much of their entertainment/socialization activity in them, isn’t that enough for the Metaverse to be worthwhile?
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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