What’s the future of the metaverse?

No one can deny that the concept of the metaverse has started to spread to previously uncharted lands. We’ve gone a long way from its humble beginnings in games such as Second Life, Habbo Hotel, or even the long-gone, long-forgotten Club Penguin.

According to Zuckerberg, Meta hopes to hit the ground running with Horizon Worlds, although even Zuckerberg admits that we’re not quite there yet. It will take years for the metaverse to permeate our reality to the point of being as widely known and accessible as what Meta is hoping to achieve.

The vision of the metaverse as a shared universe where people separated by continents can play, learn, share, and even work together is futuristic and idyllic in equal measure. Bustling streets filled with stores, parks, and people can all be recreated in the metaverse, but the technology needed to support it is still not something that every person can easily access.

Another step toward mainstream recognition lies in the realism of the metaverse experience. The introduction of VR and AR into the metaverse will certainly go a long way in making the experience feel far more realistic than it does with a keyboard and mouse.

We’ve already seen interesting crossovers that tested the limits of the metaverse. Travis Scott performed a virtual concert in Fortnite that was attended by over 12 million people. Justin Bieber has just announced that he plans to do the same. Even though The Sandbox isn’t live yet, Snoop Dogg, an avid supporter of NFTs, already owns land in it and lets people buy VIP passes to visit his mansion in the future.

Zuckerberg believes that the future of the internet lies in the metaverse — he even went as far as to call it the successor to mobile internet. Whether that is true still remains to be seen.

One thing is for sure — it’s difficult to deny that the metaverse is no longer a wild concept pulled straight out of a sci-fi film. Facebook/Meta has just added fuel to a fire that has already been burning, and in a few years, we may be seeing the metaverse utilized in ways we previously haven’t even thought possible.