Image source @ Visual China
Text | At the forefront of the Internet, author | Zhao Liguang
Since 2021, the metaverse has become the focus of the Internet stage, whether it is a startup, a game company, or an Internet giant, as long as the project associated with the metacosm has earned enough heat.
In China, the head Internet company began the meta-universe layout, ByteDance acquired the restart world and Pixsoul two products, Tencent has a game + social super QQ show, NetEase has a heavy social Yaotai, Baidu Xilang also emphasizes the social function of the product.
Recently, Tencent will be the newly established extended reality department (XR) in the interactive entertainment business group, this business group was previously mainly to carry out online games, e-sports and other interactive entertainment business, with the game basic disk layout metacosm, this establishment of XR department, is seen as to further establish the tencent metacosmic software and hardware foundation.
Yingke and Gome have also recently entered the meta-universe, and unlike Tencent's layout, these two companies are exploring new growth directions. On June 15, the "first share of live broadcasting" Yingke announced that Yingke Interactive Entertainment Group was upgraded to Ying universe and will fully enter the meta-universe, at the same time, the company's English name was also changed to Inkeverse, and related business products were laid out.
Gome has identified the meta-universe as the most important strategy, the general manager of the meta-universe project has been hired in June, and the public information from the workplace social platform pulse shows that the above-mentioned meta-universe project business scope includes meta-universe world, meta-universe e-commerce, digital people, virtual idols, digital collections, etc.
Yingke and Gome have a little similarity in that they have occupied a leading position in their respective fields, but they have gradually fallen behind in the development of recent years and lost their past market positions.
It has become a consensus that there are new opportunities under the big wave of the meta-universe, and it is not difficult for the declining "big brothers" to chase a wave of wind, in fact, it is not difficult to understand, after all, in the face of the new track, almost all of them are in the same running line, and it is more promising to break out of the siege in the meta-universe than to stick to the traditional business.
But can companies with their own ambitions sustain the metacosm boom?
Is the metacosm a virtual fire or a real fire?
People's understanding of the metaverse is still in the stage of competing imagination. However, whether the metaverse is a "virtual fire" or a real fire, it has created storytelling technology for Internet companies around the world.
Nowadays, the term metaversmic, the term of technological integration, is no less attractive to technology companies than Columbus discovered a new world, in this virtual world, Internet companies have more advantages to rebuild everything in the real world of human beings, while living in the two "parallel" worlds of reality and virtuality, the Internet giants are based on their own advantages to enter the game, betting on this track about the future, before a technological revolution, no one wants to be left behind.
Tencent reached a strategic partnership with Roblox early on, and later made a direct investment, becoming one of Roblox's shareholders and mentioning Metacosm at several meetings.
Baidu also did not give up the test field of the meta-universe, first releasing the VR industry platform, and then testing the water and strengthening the social APP Xi'an, raising the banner of the meta-universe.
Last year, Ali set up XR Lab to explore the next generation of mobile computing platforms related to the metaverse.
Admittedly, every upgrade of the computing platform brings a new round of shuffling and opportunities. The application-based mobile Internet has made the era of smart phones led by Apple; The development of 4G networks has allowed short videos to enter tens of millions of homes, achieving the popularity of vibrato; Platform-level evolution is often the result of a comprehensive set of technological developments.
Therefore, since the concept of metaverse has become popular, major Internet companies have regarded metacosmology as a key point of development for a long time.
From the perspective of the layout of Internet companies at home and abroad, different enterprises have their own maps, and participants continue to enrich the meaning of "metaverse" in their own ways.
However, the "metacosm" in the spotlight is not necessarily the real future of the Internet, although it has set off a wave of carnival, but no one knows whether this is another content consumption revolution or a dance with bubbles.
After all, the creation of the meta-universe industry is not overnight, nor is it to harvest a wave of dividends through explosive applications, but a meta-universe to embrace many emerging technologies.
Conceptual development takes time
For Internet technology companies, there are fewer and fewer stories to tell, and in addition to the metaverse, there is a more illusory Web 3.0. The core idea of Web 3.0 is to return production and ownership to the users who participate in the ecosystem and use the platform, rather than being owned by the Internet platform or the few people who control the Internet platform company.
Once, Web 1.0 left open protocols that made today's Internet possible, however, people read static web pages most of the time on Web 1.0, and most networks were built using "open protocols" such as HTTP, SMTP, and FTP.
When Facebook, Weibo, and Tieba appeared, it heralded the end of Web 1.0, and at the same time gave birth to Web 2.0, setting off a wave of Internet innovation, and Internet manufacturers, Internet entrepreneurship, and Internet dividends flourished on the basis of Web 2.0. In the web 2.0 era, people began to create and publish their own content, actively participating in the Internet, rather than passively reading what had already been published. But most of the activity on the Internet is organized and monetized by large companies, and these companies retain most of their money and control.
As the vision of the next generation of the Internet, Web 3.0 has attracted the attention of Internet companies. Because no matter how mature the Internet business model is, it will still touch the ceiling. In the era of the metaverse and Web 3.0, the digital world is as important as the real world, and the more terrifying thing is that when the physical and physical divide is broken, it will give birth to one new business model after another.
In nature, Web 3.0 combines the openness of Web 1.0 with the public participation of Web 2.0. Some Web 3.0 proponents argue that Web 3.0 is an important part of the metaverse because it allows users to create worlds that are not bound by the rules of individual companies.
The metaverse is already dizzying, so will Web 3.0 be a good pie? Starting from 2020, domestic manufacturers have successively joined the layout of the Web 3.0 sector. IT Orange data shows that Xiaomi has participated in Web 3.0 concept investments such as 3D modeling, gamified virtual space platform SaaS, and life-like AI technology for three consecutive years in 2020, 2021 and January this year.
In addition to investment in interactive devices and games, the three giants of Alibaba, Tencent and Byte have successively laid out the NFT and digital collection fields in recent years.
In June 2021, the Alipay Mini Program "Whale Detective" (formerly known as Ant Chain Fan Grain) debuted the limited edition Dunhuang Feitian and Nine Colored Deer Digital Collection. According to the Financial Associated Press, since Alipay first launched the NFT digital collection, as of January this year, there have been 46 sets and 237 kinds of digital collections totaling 2.945 million copies through ant chain, with sales reaching 37.787 million yuan.
Unlike Alibaba, which directly develops the NFT digital collection platform in the Alipay Mini Program, Tencent has chosen to release an independent NFT transaction APP. In August 2021, Tencent launched its NFT trading software "Phantom Core", and sold 300 "Audio "Thirteen Invitations" Digital Art Collection NFT" in the first term.
In October of the same year, ByteDance's TikTok launched its first NFT series, TikTok Top Moments, and TikTok also bought a full-page advertisement in the New York Times that "NFTs will be introduced to reward content creation."
Even though the giants have begun to scramble to lay out Web 3.0, no one seems to really tell the public "What exactly is Web 3.0?" In fact, so far, the definition of Web 3.0 has not been academically unified and standardized, and practitioners and investors are also in the stage of "benevolence".
It is worth noting that when an industry cannot be clearly defined, on the one hand, it means that there is still a wealth of imagination space; But on the other hand, it also means that the industry lacks standards and chaos.
However, whether it is the metaverse or Web 3.0, it is an "advanced concept" that cannot be realized for a long time in the future, and its development process is bound to be long, and the people involved need to maintain their sanity and wait for the flowers to blossom.
The metaverse is rapidly rising
Of course, the metaverse will not suddenly arise, nor will it be completed independently by a giant, it will be based on the physical world, and it will take a long evolution to put together a complete grand plan.
If the puzzles of demand stratification, industry division of labor, and technical logic are not tightly sewn together, then the metaverse world can only be a fantasy.
It is undeniable that whether the metaverse is now a real fire or a virtual fire, it has risen rapidly, gradually opening up a new perspective on human understanding itself, and perhaps, human boundless imagination can really create a completely digital virtual world.
If that day does come, it will be the beginning of a new world in which you and I will all be involved.