Journalism in the metaverse

Hearing so much hype about the metaverse and still a lot to understand. But is there a place for journalism in the metaverse?

 

I'm going to be made fun of this but last month I asked a boss of mine: What are we doing as a company to prepare ourselves to deliver news in the metaverse? And if nothing, we need to start.

The metaverse is such an interesting concept because as a general term, at least for now, it doesn't mean one thing. Fortnite is a metaverse. MMORPGs are metaverses. Facebook, Microsoft and other tech giants want to create Metaverses like what Meta (the company) has been promoting and using its Oculus tech. If Facebook's version, which I think is what people are starting to think of when they think "metaverse," becomes a thing 10-15 years from (and that's still an IF), publishers have to be ready to play in that space from the start and not try to latch on late, because then you miss your opportunity to corner your audience there.

Think of Twitter. It was so much easier to rapidly build your Twitter following 10 years ago than it is today. It's not that there aren't account that still blow up and go viral every once in a while, but there is so much more noise now that standing out and building your following -- even on higher-profile beats -- is a challenge. You're going to see the same sort of uphill battle in the metaverse if/when we get there.

The biggest reason I still say "if" on the metaverse, is because consumer VR adoption has been slow, and the biggest developments in the tech over the past 20 years have been size and affordability, not features. Eye tracking is coming along, and screens are getting better with flicker, but for the most part, when I put on an Oculus Quest, the experience isn't that much different than I had at Disney Quest in 1999 except that there are no wires. Palmer Luckey figuring out an economical approach and being able to help scale that has gotten these things into more homes, but I also worry that with VR, the social experience just isn't there.

If we can get quality consumer-level AR, then I think that's where a place like the metaverse can thrive -- for better or worse.

 

People pay for unique and novel services. They're not going to be jazzed about the idea of reading a newspaper in VR, for example. The things that would dazzle them - for example, a VR presentation of a Friday night football game - strikes me as completely unattainable without a huge amount of expended resources.

 

I’m only 30 and the concept of the metaverse makes me feel very old. I have no concept of how it will work but I have to imagine news delivery can’t change that drastically.