Ever since Facebook (FB +0.39%) announced its name change to Meta Platforms, companies and investors alike have been getting more and more excited about a secular trend called the metaverse. According to NVIDIA, the metaverse is a digital world where users can interact and share experiences. And when it comes to the metaverse, here's a question investors are asking: Is there room for more than one metaverse platform company?
In this video from Motley Fool Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 29, Fool contributors Jose Najarro and Jon Quast, along with Fool analyst Sanmeet Deo, share their opinions to try to answer this question. And in the spirit of the "Motley" Fool, there's some diversity of opinion on the subject.
Jose Najarro: I do have a quick question for you guys, Jon, mentioning the social platform. I think Facebook. Myspace was one of the early ones. It seems to be a winner-take-all between Myspace and Facebook after these social platforms evolved like Twitter, Facebook, and everything else.
Do you believe if Facebook would've started now it still would've been OK or it still would have failed? What I'm guessing. I think being at the beginning, there's a little bit of users at the beginning that it's only a one winner-take-all. But once the world develops, then there's numerous opportunity for more than one social platform.
Sanmeet Deo: I definitely think there's going to be opportunity for more than one and there's going to be multiple winners in the space. Kind of leads into one of the things I, another article I saw -- Niantic, maker Pokémon Go, raised $300 million from Coatue, which is a hedge fund. This places them at a $9 billion-dollar valuation. One of the unique things with Niantic is they're trying to build a metaverse with AR images overlaid on the real-world. If you think of Pokémon Go, you're using Pokémon Go and you see the Pokémon. Why you're like, I guess like on your phone. I guess imagine future metaverse world. You could be walking around society and you will see certain metaverse images and certain AR images while you're interacting in the real world. Basically we overlay on top of the real-world versus some of these other metaverse experiences are almost like a separate virtual reality or virtual experience that you go into. But it's not on top of the real-world and is it feels like just from early understanding of this for me is like there's almost like different ways that the metaverse is going to be approached too within.
It could be different ways companies will approach it, but also different ways maybe users might want to experience it. Maybe sometimes you're going to want to experience the overlaid on top of the real world. Sometimes we may not want to and it's too much, and maybe we just want to go into a virtual experience, experience it come back, and then be done with it and that are real-world activities. That's kind of an interesting avenue of how the metaverse could play out.
Did you have something to say Jon?
Jon Quast: I'm trying to think of that. It's just so early. It's hard to even imagine what all the possibilities could be here.
To Jose's question, I'm still chewing on it about the multiple social networks that wound up playing out and we use them for different things. Facebook is a little bit more personal, Twitter is a little bit more business, Pinterest is a little bit more project-based. You use these things for different things.
It seems to me this is just a hot take, but when it comes to the metaverse, it seems like there's so much more potential to build into one platform, different ways to experience it. Whereas you keep your Facebook and Twitter a little bit separate, at least in my case I do, it seems like there are ways that you can overlay different experiences inside of the same metaverse platform in a way that you can't with social networks. It seems like there's a greater opportunity to trend toward fewer platforms instead of more platforms. But that's a hot take.
