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Comment by ramoz | Hacker News Reader

Does Facebook really have the infrastructure in place to host the metaverse? Are they buying up the best gaming firms, have extensive enterprise architecture experience?

Look at Microsoft. My bet is on big enterprise/cloud tech + video game companies.

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No they don't. At all. That is why I related it to people selling real estate on the Moon when moon landings were yet feasible. They are clearing trying to associate the brand Metaverse with Facebook right now, and hoping they can fill in the backend when they (possibly) have the capability to. They are trying to steal brand recognition for vaporware right now. Playing the long game.

Another analogy would be the infamous Segway marketing failure. Here [1] is an article from 2015, drawing an analogy between the Segway failure and a different failed VR project (Google Glass).

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technol...

That makes sense/get your arguments now. Had similar thoughts.

Anecdotally, of my ~5 game programming friends, all with 15+ years experience, 4 did a stint at Facebook.

But all 4 left pretty quickly. They all described the experience as good for their bank account but bad for their mental health. That's saying a lot coming from game devs.

Their vision of the metaverse is so boring they could just take OpenSimulator and cut half the features. I don't doubt their ability to host.

And if they're basing it on VR they don't have to scale very fast either.

It seems like they also don't have users' trust, which is well deserved. And like a person standing in your bedroom IRL feels more invasive than online tracking, user tracking in VR will feel more invasive than on a website.

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