'A grand folly': What CIOs really think of the Metaverse

With criticism coming from IT leaders, investors and the public, is the Metaverse a solution looking for a problem?

Facebook's re-branding to ‘Meta' has received widespread criticism, with over $100bn spent so far according to some reports, and around $700bn lost in market capitalisation.

Part of the problem is a lack of a basic definition. A recent study from Fair Betting Sites revealed that 30 per cent of Brits have no idea what the metaverse is. And those who do have some understanding aren't necessarily any more positive, with 43 per cent fearing that it'll drive society towards ‘The Matrix', where lines between physical and virtual reality become blurred.

One of Meta's largest shareholders, Altimeter Capital, recently wrote an open letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

"An estimated $100bn+ investment in an unknown future is super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards. We think Meta company should cap its metaverse investments to no more than $5bn per year with more discrete targets and measures of success, as opposed to today's much more ambitious and open-ended strategy."

And technology leaders aren't any more keen. Sainsbury's group CIO Phil Jordan has no current plans to exploit it.

"Ours is a very large physical and digital business and the Metaverse still feels like it has a lot of hype associated with it," says Jordan. "If you forget the labels, we have experimented extensively with augmented and virtual reality in our shopping experience and we will continue to do that.

"We have embedded hybrid and smarter working and I would expect an increasingly virtualised way of working is an inevitability.

"So, we are looking at the potential of technology but we don't really use or describe this as leveraging the ‘Metaverse'."

'A grand folly': What CIOs really think of the Metaverse

With criticism coming from IT leaders, investors and the public, is the Metaverse a solution looking for a problem?

Even technology leaders with a strong interest in the space are shunning the metaverse. Mark Ridley, former CTO of the Financial Times, is precisely the sort of person who would be open to the concept.

"I've been a paid up member of the metaverse fan club since Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Who wouldn't want to escape the day-to-day grind of their delivery job by being a cyber ninja in a persistent virtual world every night?

"I've spent hours (probably years) in virtual worlds, from chasing holocrons in Star Wars Galaxies in the early 2000s, through the expansions of World of Warcraft, to serenely chopping trees in Valheim.

"With a colleague, back in around 2005, we even attempted to create the world's first virtual recruitment agency in Second Life. It ended badly, when he finally loaded into the game to discover he was being assaulted by a player-controlled fox. Hilarious at the time, but not a commercial success for us."

Despite these interests and history, Ridley is not a metaverse enthusiast.

"You'd think that I'd be right behind Meta and Microsoft in the race to own the metaverse. But no, it's already a busted flush.

"The dream that Zuckerberg is chasing is a solution looking for a problem - just like Google Glass - which is not how innovation works. It's the age-old story of someone with enough money to fund something they've developed a fascination with. Meta's metaverse is a grand folly, not real design thinking."

'A grand folly': What CIOs really think of the Metaverse

With criticism coming from IT leaders, investors and the public, is the Metaverse a solution looking for a problem?

However some within the industry see positives for diversity, and others claim to see signs of hope for the future. Though these generally are companies with a vested interest in the metaverse's success.

Rolf Illenberger of VR software maker VRdirect points to what he calls ‘tangible B2B benefits'.

"The Metaverse may not be a consumer play immediately, but it has B2B benefits that are tangible right now. We're all looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint, and metaverse focused offices can reduce expensive and pollutive business travel.

"Companies like Peloton have introduced connected fitness, a metaverse in its own right. Several markets, like housing, have depended on VR in recent years to help transform consumer behavior.

"Point blank, consumer behavior is starting to shift, but it's going to be gradual. We're seeing much more of a shift by businesses who wanted to get involved in owning a metaverse experience."

Others are more doubtful, including Sainsbury's Phil Jordan.

"I see value in more virtualised hybrid ways of working for sure, but I am not sure I have seen the value argument for why this is better in the Metaverse."

Mark Ridley is more scathing still.

"We simply don't have a need to sit motionless in chairs, strapped into $300 headsets in a virtual world owned by a monopoly trying to monetise us.

"Gaming takes us close to this limit already, but at least it's limited to recreation. The corporate metaverse wants to consume everything - needs to in fact, because the very concept requires that it becomes a monopoly in order to feed the massive cost required to support the infrastructure of these persistent worlds. It's AOL all over again, and we know how that ended.

"I've seen the metaverse that tech companies need to design to keep the stock markets happy, and it's Red Dwarf's Better Than Life, not the future we need.

"Humans don't need more virtual immersion and reliance on tech that only some can afford. We need companies to solve real, important problems. It's not like we don't have enough of those right now."

'A grand folly': What CIOs really think of the Metaverse

With criticism coming from IT leaders, investors and the public, is the Metaverse a solution looking for a problem?

However, it can be useful to think of the metaverse today in terms of the internet in the mid ‘90s, or the concept of cloud in the early 2000s. An interesting innovation, under-exploited and only just beginning to seep into public consciousness.

In a way, this makes Meta very much like Blockbuster video, the now-defunct video tape rental service. Everyone knows the story that the company failed to see the internet and streaming services coming, and so went out of business.

What most people don't know is that that's not quite true. Blockbuster did see it coming, in fact they saw it coming very early. It bought Movielink in 2007 for $6.6 million, expecting audiences to shift to streaming.

Given the constraints of internet speeds at the time, audiences stayed away. Burnt by the experience, the organisation then stayed out of the streaming game as competitors like Netflix ramped up their capabilities, and the rest is history.

And that's where we are now with the metaverse. The technology isn't there yet.

Try on one of the lastest VR headsets and you'll be treated to a variety of fantastic (and for most people, nauseating) gaming experiences, but nothing which suggests it's a forum for your other social, shopping or working needs.

The hardware is too clunky, the infrastructure demands too high, and the overall experience smacks too much of a beta test to bring it to the mainstream.

Yet.

In 7-10 years the metaverse will be a common place to meet all of these needs. In twenty years it will probably even be the default. But can Meta survive long enough to capitalise on its early-mover's advantage?

At this rate, no.