Wagner James Au / New World Notes

When I express my skepticism over blockchain-based metaverse platforms, despite a "boom" of major companies and brands buying virtual real estate in them, here's why: It's happened before. From 2006-2008, major companies and brands like Adidas, American Apparel, BMW, Dell, Duran Duran, Nissan, NBC, and so on (and on), bought virtual land in Second Life, mainly to use as marketing outreach to the SL userbase.

Two small problems:

• As Internet academic Clay Shirky noted, the SL userbase wasn't really growing all that much.
• And as Wired magazine reported, hardly anyone in the SL userbase was even showing up at these branded locations in Second Life.

The Wired story got a lot technically wrong (which you can read about here), but that basic narrative was true.

And as the hard fact of low engagement matriculated through Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue, the backlash against virtual real estate — at least as something major companies should bother with — was unleashed. As a brand, Second Life still has not recovered from that crash to this day.

So yes, like discussed on Monday, it does make a difference how many active users platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland have. Especially now, with the cryptocurrency and NFT market in absolute freefall.