How Facebook is trying to become a metaverse company

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In the past, I did a quick review about how Facebook works, and an analysis of how the video games industry has evolved. On this last one, you can see how the concept “metaverse” starts to be present in the companies trying to attract users to their video games and environments.

On this map, I would like to review how Facebook is trying to create a new tower of revenue using augmented reality, virtual reality and the creation of different use cases for the users.

The main map

This is the main initial map, that I’m sure it will evolve. For instance, I do not know any other company doing something similar.

The metaverse is right now in a genesis stage, in reality nobody has clear how exactly this is going to evolve and how it will mature. On this aspect to check some of the content of this site is very useful to see how many angles and activities are going on.

Related to the metaverse solutions there are so many questions, some of them could be:

  • Which solutions will evolve first?
  • How advertisement is going to be implemented?
  • What would be the new rules of the advertisement industry?
  • How Facebook is going to enable

Gameplays

This is the main gameplays I see that Facebook is putting in place to evolve on this new space:

Table of Facebook’s gameplays on metaverse field.

To me the main gameplay that I guess Facebook is going to play is Tower and moat: they are going to create all this new metaverse solutions on their Facebook platform using Oculus and all their internal implementations they started in 2016 to create a new tower of revenue; later on they will try to increase their entry barriers and build a moat.

  • Education: This point is very important, and the gaming community is group of early adopters of metaverse solutions. They will be the “testers” and promoters of this new solutions. The technology can be there for years, but if nobody adopts it, is useless.
  • Open Approaches: the creation of XR Association is a clear approach to create a common standard on this new field that enable new players to create their own AR/VR solutions that could be deployed on Facebook platform. Other members: Microsoft, Google, HTC, Sony.
  • Exploiting network effects: Facebook will use all their social networks to engage users, the question: how are they going to do it in a way that becomes natural to the users?
  • Differentiation: This point is going to be critical, I just have questions at this moment: who will be the first mover? where are the competitors going to concentrate their moves? how the gaming industry threat Facebook?
  • Thread acquisition: What is going to be the major acquisition on this field? Is the US government going to enable Facebook to acquire more companies?
  • Raising barriers to entry: Apart of the natural moat that Facebook has on their social networks, how new barriers are going to be build?
  • Driven investment: Facebook has not just acquired Oculus (2014), they have acquired and integrated on Oculus: Zurich Eye (2016), Beat Games (2019), Ready at Dawn (2020), Downpour Interactive (2021), BigVox VR (2021). You can check the list of patents and see how they started to create VR patents in 2016.
  • Experimentation: Facebook is creating different types of scenarios where users interact through AR/VR.
  • Licensing play: Facebook is creating patents of their main activities to protect their investments.
  • Restriction of movement: it will take time to see this move, but I’m sure some small companies will do great in the Facebook platform and Facebook will put in place some restrictions to bad practices.
  • Land grab and first mover: Facebook is trying to be the first, and there is a new field to be conquer by Facebook and other major players.

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