Following today’s news (18 October) that Facebook will hire 10,000 people to work on the metaverse;

George Monaghan, Thematic Analyst GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“At this point, the metaverse is roughly at the same stage of development as the internet was in the mid 1990s. There’s lots of talk, investment is increasing, and some of the necessary parts are beginning to come together.

“That we don’t yet know what the metaverse will become should not frustrate us because no one does. Facebook and others are betting that big things will come from the technology without knowing precisely what those things will be – just as smart investors in the 1990s bet that big things would come from the internet without necessarily foreseeing the emergence of social media or video streaming. They want to get in at the infrastructure level and make themselves indispensable.

“Facebook knows the metaverse has enormous potential. However, Facebook also knows the metaverse has little more than just ‘potential’. The kind of investment we’re seeing shows that the tech giants really believe the metaverse will transform our lives.”