Metaverse Definitions I
The Metaverse. It’s a major topic of conversation across all sorts of social media, but even more so among companies that expect to be associated with the Metaverse in a direct or indirect way. As we have noted previously, the Metaverse is something relatively new and as such means different things to different people, so along with the rest of the investment and scientific community, we have been trying to find a definition(s) that explains what the Metaverse actually is, in simple terms.
One description that seems to make sense is a reference to websites, which, when viewed on a display, might look three dimensional, but are two dimensional, meaning they have no depth, other than what is created artificially. The Metaverse is a 3 dimensional representation of a website, using AR/VR to add depth and extend the two dimensional edges of that image. For example, if you have a website (commercial or otherwise) that looks like a living room, it is limited to the perspective that the developer has set. You are able to click on an object and see that object details or from another angle, but everything is still 2 dimensional. If the developer did not provide a view of the object from the back, you don’t get to see the back.
By adding AR/VR to your living room site, you are now in that living room and can turn 360®, walk next to or around an object, or see things that might have been out of view of your 2D perspective. Items can be tagged, just as they might be in a 2D website, but those tags might be hidden until you look at the item, at which point the information appears in front of you. You can move around the space in almost any way and not be restricted to any perspective, allowing you to fly, hover, or pretty much do anything the software has designed in.
While none of this is much different from what you might see in a VR game, where you can travel over what are vast distances and objects, the heart of the upcoming Metaverse takes this concept out of the limited world of a game and into ‘shared’ worlds that are open to anyone who wishes to enter, essentially a 3 dimensional website that is open to the public. Such metaverses are going to be created initially by those who have the tools and a reason for their creation, and those reasons are quite diverse.
Take Google (GOOG) for example, a company that has considerable assets in geo-location. In the Metaverse, meaning once you put on an AR/VR headset, and you ask for “restaurants near me”, the Google Metaverse built around their vast location data will allow you to fly to those locations, and walk up to the first restaurant on the list. If the restaurant does not have its own Metaverse, you might just see a menu or hours of operation on the restaurant’s window, but if they have their own Metaverse site, you could walk in the door and wander through the restaurant to see if it looks interesting. Depending on the restaurant’s site complexity, you might be able to see the kitchen and speak with the chef, or look at individual items being served, but just like current websites, it will depend on the individual company involved.
Building out such a geo-location Metaverse, even for a company the size of Google, is a massive task, but ‘near me’ searches carry significant intent and immediacy, which are extremely valuable assets for Google, and make the effort to further engage Google users by opening up Metaverse worlds, a no brainer. Google Lens already allows for smartphone camera images to be used to locate or identify items or locations, so the step toward creating an AR/VR Metaverse with similar options makes sense for companies like Yelp (YELP), Foursquare (pvt), and TripAdvisor (TRIP). But while smaller companies will create their own company specific metaverses, we expect Google has much bigger plans.
Google indexes websites. Its index was estimated to hold 35 trillion web sites last year, which is a paltry 4% of the information that exists on the internet as its crawlers have access to only those links that are publicly available. The “Dark Web”, which includes information that must be directly queried from a database, password protected information, and many subscription based content, is not part of Google’s index, but that does not mean Google’s index is not valuable, in fact it is likely Google’s most valuable asset.
Google’s index and the website information it contains is a resource that Google has been collecting for years and is the basis for information it sells to others, but what if Google began to index the real world? Google already has images of billions of locations that come up when searched, so why not build an index of the physical world, capturing 3D imagery of every spot on the globe? Such an index would be the primary resource for the Metaverse, with a Metaverse search for a quiet spot in Bali not putting the picture below in front of you, but dropping you right on that beach, where you could wander until bedtime.
While indexing even a small portion of the physical world would require vast resources, the monetary benefits are also vast. Not only would access to the Metaverse require hardware of some sort, but the connection to social media, potential for local commerce, and collectable data associated with an individual’s actions in the Metaverse, make the development of such free Metaverse universes a vast resource for the data collectors of the world, and the attractiveness of the created Metaverses would keep users on-line even longer than they are now. You might be forced to be on-line using your smartphone during the day, and limited to typical websites, but when you get home, you can travel the world, explore a particular topic, and delve into a completely artificial world, and be right in the middle of the action, rather than looking through a 2 dimensional camera lens, and you can do it with friends, alone, or with a group of like-minded folk. What could be more addicting?
Geo-location is just a part of what attracts companies to the Metaverse, and given that the definition of the Metaverse is so broad and undefined, it will be the tech buzz word most likely used to describe almost anything for the next few years. You can certainly associated AR/VR to the Metaverse, but the data speeds needed for moving through the Metaverse will give those associated with 5G something to talk about. AI will be used to anticipate a user’s likes and dislikes in a particular Metaverse, and display manufacturers are already being hounded by investors as to whether their products will be applicable to the Metaverse. Data storage will certainly be a Metaverse topic as will Metaverse software development tools, so there will be few areas in the technology and consumer electronics world that would not have a reason to talk about the exciting prospects for the Metaverse. Much will be hype as it will take years to develop the sort of global Metaverse that is envisioned by many, but underlying it all is still the need to keep you the user on-line as long as possible, and that does not always have the best possible results. It’s a very difficult balancing act.
One description that seems to make sense is a reference to websites, which, when viewed on a display, might look three dimensional, but are two dimensional, meaning they have no depth, other than what is created artificially. The Metaverse is a 3 dimensional representation of a website, using AR/VR to add depth and extend the two dimensional edges of that image. For example, if you have a website (commercial or otherwise) that looks like a living room, it is limited to the perspective that the developer has set. You are able to click on an object and see that object details or from another angle, but everything is still 2 dimensional. If the developer did not provide a view of the object from the back, you don’t get to see the back.
By adding AR/VR to your living room site, you are now in that living room and can turn 360®, walk next to or around an object, or see things that might have been out of view of your 2D perspective. Items can be tagged, just as they might be in a 2D website, but those tags might be hidden until you look at the item, at which point the information appears in front of you. You can move around the space in almost any way and not be restricted to any perspective, allowing you to fly, hover, or pretty much do anything the software has designed in.
While none of this is much different from what you might see in a VR game, where you can travel over what are vast distances and objects, the heart of the upcoming Metaverse takes this concept out of the limited world of a game and into ‘shared’ worlds that are open to anyone who wishes to enter, essentially a 3 dimensional website that is open to the public. Such metaverses are going to be created initially by those who have the tools and a reason for their creation, and those reasons are quite diverse.
Take Google (GOOG) for example, a company that has considerable assets in geo-location. In the Metaverse, meaning once you put on an AR/VR headset, and you ask for “restaurants near me”, the Google Metaverse built around their vast location data will allow you to fly to those locations, and walk up to the first restaurant on the list. If the restaurant does not have its own Metaverse, you might just see a menu or hours of operation on the restaurant’s window, but if they have their own Metaverse site, you could walk in the door and wander through the restaurant to see if it looks interesting. Depending on the restaurant’s site complexity, you might be able to see the kitchen and speak with the chef, or look at individual items being served, but just like current websites, it will depend on the individual company involved.
Building out such a geo-location Metaverse, even for a company the size of Google, is a massive task, but ‘near me’ searches carry significant intent and immediacy, which are extremely valuable assets for Google, and make the effort to further engage Google users by opening up Metaverse worlds, a no brainer. Google Lens already allows for smartphone camera images to be used to locate or identify items or locations, so the step toward creating an AR/VR Metaverse with similar options makes sense for companies like Yelp (YELP), Foursquare (pvt), and TripAdvisor (TRIP). But while smaller companies will create their own company specific metaverses, we expect Google has much bigger plans.
Google indexes websites. Its index was estimated to hold 35 trillion web sites last year, which is a paltry 4% of the information that exists on the internet as its crawlers have access to only those links that are publicly available. The “Dark Web”, which includes information that must be directly queried from a database, password protected information, and many subscription based content, is not part of Google’s index, but that does not mean Google’s index is not valuable, in fact it is likely Google’s most valuable asset.
Google’s index and the website information it contains is a resource that Google has been collecting for years and is the basis for information it sells to others, but what if Google began to index the real world? Google already has images of billions of locations that come up when searched, so why not build an index of the physical world, capturing 3D imagery of every spot on the globe? Such an index would be the primary resource for the Metaverse, with a Metaverse search for a quiet spot in Bali not putting the picture below in front of you, but dropping you right on that beach, where you could wander until bedtime.
While indexing even a small portion of the physical world would require vast resources, the monetary benefits are also vast. Not only would access to the Metaverse require hardware of some sort, but the connection to social media, potential for local commerce, and collectable data associated with an individual’s actions in the Metaverse, make the development of such free Metaverse universes a vast resource for the data collectors of the world, and the attractiveness of the created Metaverses would keep users on-line even longer than they are now. You might be forced to be on-line using your smartphone during the day, and limited to typical websites, but when you get home, you can travel the world, explore a particular topic, and delve into a completely artificial world, and be right in the middle of the action, rather than looking through a 2 dimensional camera lens, and you can do it with friends, alone, or with a group of like-minded folk. What could be more addicting?
Geo-location is just a part of what attracts companies to the Metaverse, and given that the definition of the Metaverse is so broad and undefined, it will be the tech buzz word most likely used to describe almost anything for the next few years. You can certainly associated AR/VR to the Metaverse, but the data speeds needed for moving through the Metaverse will give those associated with 5G something to talk about. AI will be used to anticipate a user’s likes and dislikes in a particular Metaverse, and display manufacturers are already being hounded by investors as to whether their products will be applicable to the Metaverse. Data storage will certainly be a Metaverse topic as will Metaverse software development tools, so there will be few areas in the technology and consumer electronics world that would not have a reason to talk about the exciting prospects for the Metaverse. Much will be hype as it will take years to develop the sort of global Metaverse that is envisioned by many, but underlying it all is still the need to keep you the user on-line as long as possible, and that does not always have the best possible results. It’s a very difficult balancing act.
Secluded beach in Bali - Source: Google Earth
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