Neal Stephenson, a popular sci-fi writer coined the phrase “metaverse” in his first best-selling and breakthrough 1992 novel, Snow Crash. Now that concept is becoming a reality, and what’s more, you can invest in the metaverses. In Ready Player One, The OASIS is another example of an advanced virtual reality. Numerous other sci-fi authors, such as Ian M Banks, have created and used similar concepts within their novels.
Back in September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was clearly interested in advancing the metaverse. In a recent earnings call, Facebook made it clear that they want to unify communities, creators and eCommerce in the metaverse with Zuckerberg saying:
“Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life.”
And just last week Facebook rebranded to Meta and announced its plans to develop the “Metaverse.”
How big could metaverses become?
Already there are numerous household names making serious money in this space such as Roblox and Fortnite. These are complete virtual reality worlds where users exist through avatars. Slightly less well-known examples of virtual realities include Decentraland, Upland and Sandbox, as well as Victoria VR which is another platform that will launch soon.
From an investment perspective, we can confidently say that this explosion in virtual reality and metaverses is comparable to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. What we are witnessing now is the next phase of the internet being created, with metaverses potentially set to overtake and replace the web as it currently exists.
Related: New industry, new rules: Building the Metaverse without bias
Already some of the companies in this space such as Fortnite could sustain growth until they are comfortably sitting alongside Facebook, Google, Amazon and other tech giants. Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, recently raised $1 billion with Sony pouring $200 million into that funding round. Facebook is putting a lot of…
