I have owned land in Second Life continuously for probably ten years or more. Haven't been on recently but very familiar with what you are talking about. NSFW is a big part of it but by no means the only part.
Meta has a very dominant position in VR headsets. All they have to do is add add a "teleport friend" button to message notifications inside of Oculus Quest 2 when you are in the default home environment, allow some movement in the space, and they will have by far the most popular version of the Metaverse. If they want to start doing brand deals, place some store portals near the door.
You really think that won't start taking away a ton of business from VR Chat and the rest? They will win by default. They completely control the experience. From the moment you turn the headset on, you are already IN their Metaverse. It's just a shit Metaverse with no features. But regardless of what Zuck understands, there are too many highly paid geniuses around him absorbing some of his billions to not take advantage of the situation.
I honestly don't know a single person with a oculus. Many with the PlayStation or the HTC one.
I also barely know people that use Facebook. And many that are not willing to create a FB account for whatever reason.
It's just anectotal. But I don't see how this walled garden will find any widespread use around here. Just as I know no one who uses Apples walled garden chats, simply because apple never reached a critical mass and people don't like to be locked out of their friends.
Does that mean that every strong economy should follow these trends? iPhone were as popular as 60% of all sold phones here some years ago, and yet facetime & iMessage did never really get any relevance because of the other 40%. No circle of friends is generally iPhone only, never was.
Switzerland may is different, but also representative of a wealthy kinda smart economy.
I don’t know where your first question comes from. Myself and this other parent are merely saying the stats say differently. Nothing about your first question.
I FaceTime with someone in Switzerland. It doesn’t mean much. I know Apple’s ecosystem isn’t big in Europe. However, when I interact with people across the ocean, they have a pretty easy time using Apples FaceTime if they are on iOS. Sometimes even if just iPad.
In this situation I’m the one pushing friendships more. Otherwise it would be douchey to have someone pull out an iPad just to FaceTime with you.
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Sorry if any of my messages seem confrontational. Sometimes I’m upset with my own life and don’t speak as nicely as I should.
A lot of my thoughts come from the small organic free virtual coworking community i cofounded (in my bio :o). Before that, my experience with talking to Europeans on a near daily basis had never been there.
Yeah. Like sibling comment said. You are already in your own wild bubble. You’re taking your anecdotes and having them explain why people are or are not doing things in general. When in reality things like Facebook, Oculus, iMessage/FaceTime are all popular.
I must be living in the same alternate reality as the GP, then. Facebook and Whatsapp are commonly used around here, but the others hardly exist at all.
You named Facebook and WhatsApp as being popular. Of course everything popular won’t be popular in your anecdotal experience. The difference is the OP dismissed a bunch of popular stuff without exception.
It is interesting you know many people with Playstation and HTC VR but none with Oculus.
What is my bubble? I did not mention what is popular in my anecdotal experience. You may have misread or assumed things that were not said. I did not bring America up either :).
Tldr: I did not bring up any of my own world experiences
Meta has a very dominant position in VR headsets. All they have to do is add add a "teleport friend" button to message notifications inside of Oculus Quest 2 when you are in the default home environment, allow some movement in the space, and they will have by far the most popular version of the Metaverse. If they want to start doing brand deals, place some store portals near the door.
You really think that won't start taking away a ton of business from VR Chat and the rest? They will win by default. They completely control the experience. From the moment you turn the headset on, you are already IN their Metaverse. It's just a shit Metaverse with no features. But regardless of what Zuck understands, there are too many highly paid geniuses around him absorbing some of his billions to not take advantage of the situation.