My investing muse - What's the “META" with Facebook? … a glimpse into metaverse (30Oct2021)

Metaverse is a hot topic as Facebook changes her corporate brand to $Meta Platforms, Inc.(FB)$.

Facebook’s aim is to connect people together and they regard metaverse as the next most important experience of connecting people together. Imagine us as characters living in the virtual world of Minecraft or Sim City. This is made possible thanks to hardware such as VR headsets or glasses that are able to superimpose/project/discover digital content before our very eyes. In essence, social networking will move from a web/screen experience to virtual reality or augmented reality setting.

A. Virtual Reality (VR)

Let us talk about the first one … virtual reality by means of a VR headset. Horizon Home (by Meta) is a digital home that we can fashion, decorate, design - perhaps decorate with digital art that is purchased with metaverse currency (or crypto-like NFT or digital currency). This is a place where we can invite our friends to visit. For us, we will be able to have our own avatars. The photo below shows an example of us visiting our friend’s virtual home as we show up in our various avatars.

We can dress up our Avatar, choose our clothes, (purchase special issue digital clothing for our Avatar) and more. At this place, we can gather with our friends to share photos, watch videos, play games and share experiences. We can even teleport together (into a video of) Mt Everest to take in the surrounding view and sights with our friends.

For Horizon Worlds, Meta allows us to plan for events like surprise birthday parties and even collaborate with others to create art, music or games together. These products can then be shared or sold in the meta world. The commercial potential for this is immense and we are only limited by our own imagination.

In fact, Meta is planning to design work offices as part of the hybrid remote work. They are selling this work-life without commuting out of our homes. This will be a shared physical space, accessible from any part of the world so long there is connectivity.

B. Augmented Reality (AR)

For augmented reality, we will be able to engage with special glasses which are able to “see" digital content as we walk down the street. An example can be seen in the photo below when an artist has planted a digital animation in the street. Through our augmented reality glasses, we are able to view this animation in 3-D format and even to share the digital animation with our friends (in the last photo below).

In essence, social media will pivot from a flat-screen platform into a virtual or augmented reality using hardware like VR headsets or special glasses. There are also developments to add hand gestures to the VR experience and also avatars that are able to reflect real-time facial expressions. This meant that we are creating a “digital life” using these technologies. Meta has stressed that they have built this with safety and privacy in mind where digital content like photos, videos, art, music can be shared from screen to 3-D or hologram. We can even project an “augmented reality” of games onto the coffee table, shared amongst friends in the same room.

Going forward, Meta is expecting more companies to build interconnected worlds to share this metaverse together.

C. Commercial Applications

This will mean that merchants can offer their products as we walk past their “physical stores” or “ads in the metaverse”. If we are interested, we should be able to purchase the products with simple transactions - imagine the potential for marketing, e-commerce/retail and more. It is also known that some users may wish to live a life completely different from their current social media or work. Thus, Meta is exploring the possibility to allow separate account creations in the metaverse, away from their current social media platforms.

D. Investment possibilities

What it means for investors will be the demand for RAM, storage, chips, graphics cards, servers, data security, data privacy, 5G and more. More importantly, the government will need to look into regulations for both security & privacy of data, unfair business practices and to close down avenues for criminal activities or transactions. This is an interesting space with great personal and commercial potential, especially for content producers. Let us monitor this closely as companies like $Microsoft(MSFT)$  and $NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$ have expressed great interest in this space too.

As a closing note, some things are better done "in person” in an “analogue” fashion instead of a mere digital “like". For those who are far away from friends and loved ones, this can be a viable workaround but this is not a substitute for face to face interaction. Humans - we are meant to connect after all.

<Photos below are taken from Facebook’s presentation about Metaverse>