Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, is defending Meta’s eye-popping investments in the metaverse, saying he believes the technology will change how consumers use the internet.
In his blog post Wednesday (May 18), Clegg compared the transition to the metaverse to the way our browsing preferences have gone from using desktop computers to smartphones.
The metaverse is expected to be a collection of interconnected online worlds that will be accessible through virtual reality and augmented reality headsets and apps.
“Skepticism is a natural reaction to something that sounds like it’s straight out of a science fiction novel — in a way, it is — especially when there are wider societal concerns about how tech operates in the two-dimensional world,” Clegg wrote.
A Meta-funded study by Lau Christensen and Alex Robinson, both of the economic consulting firm Analysis Group, estimated that the metaverse will contribute $3 trillion to the global economy by 2031.
“Like today’s internet, the metaverse will be a constellation of technologies, platforms and products,” Clegg wrote. “It won’t be built, operated or governed by any one company or institution. It will take a range of companies large and small, civil society, the public sector, and millions of individual creators.”
Related: Facebook Pay to Be Rebranded Meta Pay
Last week, Meta Platforms announced that it will rename Facebook Pay — its payment system available across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp — as Meta Pay “soon,” according to a May 11 blog post.
In August, Facebook Messenger added the option for users to send cash birthday gifts directly through the platform using Facebook Pay, which has taken on competitors both inside its own ecosystem and across the wider web, including Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
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