Back when the first major powerhouses of social media were beginning to hit their stride, Facebook and Twitter were expected to take over the world, and MySpace had already died an ugly death, relegated to the has-been pile of so-not-cool-anymore, companies and markets clamored over how the social media world was going to take over the consumer arena, drive sales, and become the next big billboard of the twenty-first century. The first big-big company to dive in was Ford, yes the automaker. They dropped serious money into a big marketing campaign that was going to be the breakthrough zenith of new digital market. And...nothing happened. The campaign failed, no one gave a crap, and the social media bubble for marketing popped. [Ford would argue different, they point to thousands of sales of their Fiesta compact after their early Facebook campaigns. Ok. I'm a truck guy; a tin can compact on wheels to me is not a car worth considering. Difference of a opinion. But I will give Ford points for its Fiesta success.]

Right now the Metaverse 3.0 feels the same. It's the next big thing, better get on board, this is where the world is going and everyone is going to be...and nothing is happening. Aside from some gaming platforms, the cruz of the Metaverse is dodgy looking 3-D environments that look like brain-vomit rejects of the early 2000s [think Anarchy Online], and empty cubicle rooms of non-matching colors and ugly perimeter ending edges. Wow. I think Xbox offerings like Destiny and Call of Duty are for more immersive than what I'm seeing in this vaunted Web 3.0.

Don't get me wrong. There is a lot of creativity going on that is being thrown into the same bucket. However, it's not really something new. Instead, many creators are just hitting their stride in finding synergies between using different tools at once. Instead of just focus on one particular aspect, like video or music, some of the most successful creators dubbed as Web 3.0 leaders are simply combining expertise in video, content and streaming entertainment. Much of it has been led and continues to be directly influenced by vloggers and streamers who have been so successful, they practically run mini-companies to keep their content fresh on a daily basis. Good for them.

However, for the grand masses, nothing new is happening. Well, I take that back. The "something new" is a proliferation of snake oil sellers all over the place. Probably the grandest of them all has been Facebook's Zuckerberg and his vision of the Metaverse [which was laid out for all to see in a 2019 Blake Harris book about the genesis of the Oculus, The History of the Future]. It's only fitting the attempt to push a centralized platform has crashed and burned in a billion dollar loss. But while the digital Icarus fried his wings too close to the sun, there are still thousands of others out there shelling some myth that the next big Internet thing is right around the corner and we all better get on board with their equipment, software, or cloud product.

While the biggest leap forward has actually been the widespread availability of broadband infrastructure than made streaming, video, high-capacity digital content and more possible in the first place, the remainder of what is the great leap forward is really a hodge-podge of interactive social platforms. What does need to happen to fully evolve in what I dub, "immersion."

The concept of immersion is simple; think if yourself in a pool. If you're on the edge coping looking in, you're not even in the pool, period. If on the entry steps, you're dancing around the perimeter, maybe having a transaction or two, but you're not immersed. If you're in the pool up to your waist or neck, you're getting involved but still reserving the ability to function traditionally and get out whenever your feel spooked. It's only when you're in the water, one hundred percent, and every aspect of your life is now digital that you have achieved immersion.

Now, translate the immersion concept to what the Metaverse could be. There's no need to think hard, Hollywood already did it for you. Movies like Lawnmower Man, Hackers, and the Matrix series already imagined the dystopian futures for you. Put aside the drama, imagine for a moment doing literally everything online, and you get the idea of what a true Metaverse could be. There would no reason to disconnect except maybe to eat and go to the bathroom and take a shower once in a while. Think it's impossible? Think again, what the hell did ninety percent of us just do during the COVID lockdown in 2020? Oh yah, that.

The real Metaverse isn't sexy, like a Blade Runner movie set. Instead, right now it's still a bit of a clunky hodge-podge of services, sites, tools, social media platforms and the Internet, all sort of duck-taped together. The latest VR environments are trying to go further, but again they still look like prototype rejects from Anarchy Online.

No, a working real Metaverse is going to have a couple of key elements that work really damn well, maintain their reliability consistently, and allow people to build on digitally. Those are:

• A widely accepted, protected and decentralized financial system by which people can exchange value
• An environment where people can stake a presence and grow it organically into something more
• A partnered communication system where people can literally communicate as they do now with writing, video, interaction and similar to connect, synergize and develop

Provide those three things without question and make them consistently available, and you have a working Metaverse that matters. Everything will take care of itself as people build and create in the digital petri dish. Marketers never get this; their focus is on pushing a product or service alone. Digital companies are too territorial, only building what is needed to sell their livelihood as well. Don't expect government to figure it out for the people; agencies are still just realizing the value of large database management and websites. No, the real Metaverse that matters will have to wait until it happens organically, just like blockchain did and similar. Ideally, it could be sustained much the same way Unix has survived all these decades [yeah, I'm biased, lol].