How far are people from socializing in the metaverse?

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Under the aura of the Metaverse, social interaction in the Metaverse has also become a new battlefield for many manufacturers to compete for. Taking advantage of the Metaverse's outlet, more and more manufacturers aim at the social track of the Metaverse, and have launched a variety of social software such as Hiron, Little Iceland, and Jelly. Among them, many Metaverse social apps have brought people some novel social experiences, such as virtual concerts, virtual character interaction, and even buying a house in the "Metaverse".

But without exception, these Metaverse social APPs have come to an end after a while – although more and more players have entered the Metaverse Social, but so far, the Metaverse Social has not created phenomenal products. It is undeniable that the emergence of the metaverse has extended the audience's imagination about social interaction, but the question is, why can't the metaverse bring metaverse social interaction? How far are people from socializing in the metaverse?

The short-lived metaverse social app

In fact, at present, the concept of Metaverse social APP is still in a stage of savage growth, and the definition of Metaverse social APP has not yet been officially finalized. However, as a key element of the metaverse, social networking has always been seen as "the realistic entrance to the construction of the metaverse in the short term".

Therefore, on the one hand, some common social softwares call themselves metaverse social apps after adding some virtual avatars and virtual scenes when the version is updated. On the other hand, some metaverse social apps simulate the social space into a "xx universe", "xx planet", etc., so that users will settle in as new residents and start their own metaverse life, such as soul.

According to a report by the data company Sensor Tower, since the concept of "metaverse" broke out, an average of one "metaverse" app has been added every day. From November 2021 to January 2022, about 552 apps added the word "metaverse" to their descriptions, and 70 of them claimed to be Metaverse social apps .

With the market's enthusiasm for Metaverse social, some Metaverse social apps have gradually emerged and attracted people's attention. For example, in January this year, the Metaverse social APP “Jelly” reached the top of the free rankings in the Apple Store within 20 days of its launch, becoming the first social APP to surpass WeChat in the past two years. You know, the last social software that surpassed WeChat was Ali's DingTalk.

Jelly is positioned as an "online apartment with close friends", emphasizing being the one you like, inviting good friends and real friends to come in, and the limit of the friend list is 50 people. The social positioning of acquaintances allows young people to dare to display their status casually and truly on this APP. At the same time, users can also choose to publish the current status. Based on location sharing and status sharing, Jelly users can know the status and location of their friends even though they are in different places with their friends.

In addition, the sense of design is also an important factor for the rapid growth of gel users. Entering the Jelly APP, the first step is to create a fashionable virtual 3D image for yourself in the form of "pinching your face". Because they like the avatars of jelly, many young people have recorded their jelly outfits for a week on social platforms.

In addition, Baidu's Xiyang, Tianxiaxiu's Rainbow Universe, and Slow Planet produced by startups have also received great attention. Taking Greece as an example, more than ten companies and institutions have settled in Greece. On the map of Xiyang, you can not only see schools such as Communication University of China, but also many companies such as NVIDIA, Lynk & Co, FAW and so on. Regardless of whether these apps advertise the metaverse, they are regarded as social apps with the concept of the metaverse because of their avatars, social relationships, and online spaces.

However, unfortunately, without exception, these Metaverse social apps have come to an end after a while. On February 11, the number of downloads of Jelly reached 490,000 times, ranking the top of the App Store. The APP is expected to be downloaded 2.27 million times within a month. After the appearance of Jelly, many young people are on Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohong Books and other social platforms publish the relevant scenes of the gel APP, looking for players and friends with the same hobbies. But on February 13, the Jelly APP was quickly taken off the shelves due to privacy, delay, crash, freeze and other issues.

And Baidu's "Xi Rong" and the "Hongyu Universe" of Tianxiaxiu were launched in November last year at the same time, which can be regarded as the forerunners in this wave. Coincidentally, the reputation of the two also suffered from Waterloo. After Xiyong was opened, it was also criticized by users for its rough picture quality and slow loading speed. At present, the national App store scores of Xiyang and Hongyu Universe are 2.3 and 2.6 respectively.

Metaverse social APP, which is hot and cool.

Why is Metaverse social shut down?

The demise of the Metaverse social app is not difficult to understand. In fact, whether it is Jelly, Xirong, or other Metaverse APPs, their operation cores are the same, and they all use 3D technology to create immersive scenes that simulate life patterns for users . In the world created by these apps, players can do various things in daily life, such as reading, eating, sleeping, etc., but they cannot obtain a sense of experience that is different from life.

Ideally, the subversion of Metaverse to traditional social interaction lies in the "digital simulation world". With the advantages of wider connection range, higher communication efficiency, and more realistic communication methods, the previous communication mode of text or video can be changed. Use a more realistic digital form to communicate and interact, but in fact, the metaverse social app is still in a state of emptiness, and the connection with reality is extremely weak.

Although players can see all kinds of 3D characters and communicate with them in text, the connection between them is no different from social media such as QQ and WeChat, and it is not easy to build a sense of trust. In addition, the backgrounds of these APPs are seriously homogenized, and the basic operations are only actions such as changing clothes and pinching faces. Occasionally, there are some interactive mini-games with low difficulty, and users naturally experience aesthetic fatigue and operational fatigue.

Moreover, the current Metaverse APP, due to various problems such as technology and capital, has a clear distinction between the 3D scene and reality in the screen, and it is impossible to bring users an immersive real-life experience in the movie.

For example, although Lily uses the concept of metaverse hotspots in its promotions, there is currently no interactive gameplay with avatars in the scene in the app. There is only one avatar, and it lacks connection with the overall content. For the time being, it is still far from socializing in the metaverse. ; At the same time, the way of wearing avatars is not new, and there is no core differentiation difference in this aspect; except for technical issues such as performance and LBS, the overall product structure has not been separated from the core of countless outdated social products. , and there is no core user retention function.

In short, the current Metaverse social software does not bring a new way of social interaction in the core gameplay. Whether it is location sharing or island-based social networking, similar products have appeared in the early days of Internet development, and after market selection, such products have not become the mainstream of social software. limitation.

Not only that, our current mainstream social software or the longest online social software have strong tool attributes and can be applied to various office scenarios. However, there is still a certain gap between the current Metaverse social software and efficiency tools. It can even be said that they do not have any functions that can be closely related to the office scene .

In addition, the current Metaverse social APP is also based on the previous social software business model, and no Metaverse social APP has gone out of its own business model . For example, the social metaverse soul, the prospectus shows that although Soul’s gross profit exceeds 80%, Soul’s net loss is expanding year by year. The loss in 2020 increased by 63% year-on-year, and the loss in 2021Q1 was more than 6 times that of the same period. The main reason for the incessant blood flow is the high advertising and marketing expenses. The total revenue of Q1 Soul in 2021 will be 238 million yuan, but the marketing expenses will cost 471 million yuan, which is nearly twice the total revenue.

There is no hope of throttling, and we can only start with open source . Membership payment, value-added services, advertising and e-commerce are the monetization models that Soul is already trying. Among them, value-added services such as membership payment and virtual currency are the most mature. In Q1 2021, membership payment and value-added services will account for about 94% of total revenue, while advertising revenue will only account for 2.6% of total revenue. At the beginning of 2021, Soul officially launched Giftmoji. Users can give each other virtual gifts, or choose to exchange virtual gifts for physical gifts, successfully opening up the field of social e-commerce.

However, the reality is cruel, and Soul users don't seem to buy it . In the case of making ends meet, Soul's book losses are expanding . According to the data, in 2019, Soul recorded a net loss of 299.5 million yuan, and in 2020, the net loss expanded to 488.1 million yuan year-on-year; in the first quarter of 2020, Soul recorded a net loss of 52.8 million yuan, and in the first quarter of 2021, the net loss expanded to 48.1 million yuan year-on-year. 382.5 million yuan, the net loss increased by 62.67% and 624.7% year-on-year respectively.

Metaverse social needs to start from the bottom

Dong Haoyu, a scholar at Peking University, wrote in "The START Map of Metaverse Characteristics and Attributes": "The Metaverse is a virtual world created by linking with scientific and technological means, a virtual world that maps and interacts with the real world, and a digital living space with a new social system." In other words, the Metaverse is a technological product that needs to rely on the development of multiple frontier technologies. Therefore, the development of the Metaverse must follow the industrial technology development law of the technology itself, and breakthroughs in the research and development of industrial technology are needed to promote the development of technology in the future direction.

However, the current Metaverse social APP is essentially an upgrade or 3D transformation of some old gameplay, and does not meet some rigid needs of users . Roblox once defined the metaverse with 8 characteristics in its prospectus: identity, friends, low latency, immersion, diversity, anywhere, economy, and civilization. Metaverse social apps at the current stage can probably only achieve "friends" and "immersion" and other elements. Compared with the metaverse "Second Life" that people really need, the most mature apps are only "semi-finished products".

In the face of the battle of the giants, the competition of Metaverse Apps is naturally not an evolution along a predetermined route. Various social gameplays such as "map socialization", "voice socialization", "virtual socialization" and "anonymous socialization" are intertwined. A new bottle of "Metaverse", but still with the old wine of "Social Track Battle".

From the perspective of the development of the Metaverse, although the Metaverse is in the limelight, the social interaction of the Metaverse is still in the wild growth period, not the current mainstream trend. You must know that a real Metaverse social app needs to present at least three basic features in addition to the three-dimensional virtual image: first, the metaverse social space can be used for virtual scene creation; second, the metaverse social scene can be superimposed on virtual and real images ; The third is that the social process of the metaverse can be multi-person interaction and collaboration.

The core of this metaverse social app, which is driven by technological industry breakthroughs, is technological breakthroughs, but at present, even the most basic VR and AR technologies have not been realized, and there is no metaverse era at all. In the final analysis, the Metaverse is an ecosystem, and its construction requires hardware entry, as well as supporting operating systems, underlying technologies, artificial intelligence, content and other components, and related product innovations require systematic top-down support.

Looking back at the past 20 years, the Internet has profoundly changed the daily life and economic structure of human beings; in the next 20 years, the metaverse may have a more profound impact on human society and reshape the digital economic system. The Metaverse connects the real world and the virtual world, and is the carrier of human digital survival and migration, improving experience and efficiency, extending human creativity and more possibilities. The digital world has gradually changed from the reproduction and simulation of the physical world to the extension and expansion of the physical world. The production and consumption of digital assets will also significantly react to the physical world.

But the premise of all this is to make breakthroughs, innovations, and explorations in the realization of the underlying industrial technology of the Metaverse . After all, the construction and breakthrough of core technologies can not be achieved by relying on slogans, but to be like Huawei, which has been like a company like Huawei for decades. Cold bench.

Only when the whole society forms such a consensus, can we have the opportunity to truly realize social interaction in the Metaverse in the future, and gain the right to speak at the level of the underlying industry chain of the Metaverse all over the world.